Arkansas receives $17M grant to support maternal health initiatives
Arkansas has been granted $17M by the US Department of Health and Human Services to further improve the health of pregnant women, new mothers, and babies.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas has been granted $17 million by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to improve efforts towards enriching the health of pregnant women, new mothers, and babies.
The Transforming Maternal Health (TMaH) grant was awarded by HHS’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and aims to “support key efforts” towards improving the overall health of Arkansas pregnant women, new moms, and babies.
According to officials, the grant will be the provider of funding for the next 10 years to multiple state Medicaid agencies across the country, including that of Arkansas. Officials said that the overall goal of the grant is to reduce disparities when in terms of access and treatment to services.
It’s something that Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders agrees with herself.
“Healthy moms means healthy babies,” said Gov. Sanders. “Pursuing this grant was one of the first major recommendations of the Strategic Committee for Maternal Health [and the grant] will facilitate much of the rest of our work to increase the maternal care workforce, invest in technology and research to help new moms, and connect expecting moms with health care providers in all corners of the state.”
According to officials, the grant is broken up into three main portions — the first being access to care, infrastructure, and workforce capacity. Continuing on, the second portion focuses on quality improvement and safety. Lastly, the third portion focuses on whole-person care delivery.
Here’s a break down of the specific planned investments of these funds in Arkansas, according to a press release received by the Arkansas Department of Human Services:
- Analyzing data to better target maternal health services
- Educating providers and pregnant women on the benefits of leveraging doulas, Community Health Workers, and midwives.
- Investing in technology to better serve pregnant women and providers
- Building better technology infrastructure to collect and share data tied to maternal health measures
- Redesigning Medicaid reimbursement rates and payment structures, including a focus on incentive payments to providers whose patients have healthier outcomes
- Improving connections between health care providers and community-based organizations like nonprofits and faith-based groups that also serve low-income Arkansas women
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