Georgia becomes focus of maternal health discussion with visit from Biden administration

ATLANTA — The Biden administration is confronting the country’s worsening maternal mortality rate with visits to multiple states, including Georgia on Monday, to focus attention on women’s access to health care.

The visit to Atlanta is part of a year-long initiative launched in January to expand the federal government’s work to address maternal health disparities across the country and implement the White House Blueprint for Addressing the Maternal Health Crisis. The meeting will bring together community organizations that are already working to reduce pregnancy-related deaths and complications in Georgia.

The problem is especially acute in Georgia, where women are dying from pregnancy-related causes at the highest rate documented by the state in the past decade. Each year, between 35 and 40 mothers die in Georgia, yet the vast majority of deaths are believed to be preventable, the AJC reported earlier this year.

“Nothing breaks my heart more than when we go to a meeting and a woman who has had a bad maternity outcome says, ‘I thought I did everything right’,” said Carole Johnson, administrator of the federal agency that is organizing gatherings in multiple states. “The burden shouldn’t be on women. The burden should be on us as policymakers to make sure that they have all the services and supports they need to have the best possible outcome.”

Johnson leads the Health Resources and Services Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, that focuses on funding state and local maternal and child health programs. The work includes growing the state’s health care workforce, supporting maternal health care in rural areas and ensuring people can access health care regardless of their ability to pay, she said.

Johnson is expected to announce new funding for maternal health programs during her visit.

The federal agency awarded more than $128 million to fund health centers across the state last fiscal year. In 2022, the centers in Georgia provided prenatal services for 7,500 people and supported the delivery of 2,100 babies, Johnson said. The agency also supports an array of services before and after a mother gives birth.

Dr. Tracey Lemon, an obstetrician who works at one of the health centers and has practiced medicine in Atlanta for 23 years, said there are fewer maternal deaths in the city.

Lemon attributed it to required annual training and drills at the hospitals so physicians and nurses can practice their response to critical incidents, such as when a woman has a hemorrhage. And, at her practice, all pregnant women are referred to a high-risk pregnancy specialist, known as a perinatologist.

There’s enough of these specialists locally to screen pregnancies in the metro area.

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