WHYY
By
(VadimGuzhva/Bigstock)
Back in 2010, Philadelphia hospital systems and city agencies started to notice something: Maternal deaths were rising in the city.
The Philadelphia Maternal Mortality Review Committee was founded shortly afterward, with the express purpose of identifying key causes of the city’s higher-than-average maternal mortality rate and providing recommendations for policy and programmatic change in major health systems.
The first in the nation of its kind, Philadelphia’s MMRC reviewed the 110 pregnancy-associated deaths that occurred in the city from 2013 to 2018. Though the people in this study self-identified as women, the city acknowledges that not all pregnant people identify that way, and transgender and nonbinary birthing people face unique barriers in accessing quality health care.