Engaging Communities in Maternal Mortality Review Committees for Equity in Process and Outcome (Invitation Only)

For the past year, the Wisconsin MMRT has taken action to begin meaningfully including diverse community members in committee processes through their partnership with the Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA). In 2021, the Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA) completed an environmental scan and published a report entitled, Maternal Mortality Review Committees: Sharing Power with Communities.

Through this report, BMMA and the community members they interviewed provided Maternal Mortality Review Committees, the state health agencies that administer or partner with them, and other key public health, health care, and policy decision makers with a tremendous and needed gift: recommendations for meaningfully including diverse community members in committee processes. The WI MMRT’s work is an output of their partnership with BMMA to operationalize the report recommendations.

At the same time, the New Mexico Black and Indigenous Maternal Health Policy Coalition has led reform of New Mexico’s state maternal mortality review committee (MMRC), through Senate Bill 96 passed in NM’s 2021 legislative session along with subsequent non-legislative policy implementation to support the committee’s function. The efforts of these states focus on bringing equity into the process of MMRCs so they have the capacity to be assets for advancing equity in maternal health.

During this roundtable discussion, you’ll hear briefly from the Wisconsin and New Mexico teams about their intentions, experiences, successes, and challenges on this path. Then, you’ll have the opportunity to share with your colleagues from across the country about the challenges and successes you’ve experienced including community voices and expertise on your MMRC. We’ll discuss strategies, commonalities across regions and opportunities and needs for additional support for increasing community engagement in maternal mortality review processes. We acknowledge that challenging topics, including those of racism, harm, and power dynamics will be deeply woven throughout these conversations. We will face these hard truths and care for and bolster one another, especially our Black and Indigenous colleagues and other colleagues of color, in this space.