Pennsylvania agencies are working on a plan to make childbirth and the months after safer and healthier for parents and their children in Pennsylvania.
"We are really looking to put together a set of strategies that ... can be actionable across the state, no matter your circumstances, whether you're in an urban, suburban or rural county," said Dr. Val Arkoosh, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.
On Tuesday, Arkoosh sat with health care providers, local elected officials and a patient at the Scranton Primary Health Care Center to learn from their experiences to inform the development of the Shapiro Administration’s Maternal Health Strategic Plan. She asked them what the state could do to make it easier for providers to deliver high quality care.
"For us to be able to share our experiences and have a patient come and share her experiences, we think is just so important ... for the benefit of the population at large," said Joe Hollander, CEO of Scranton Primary.
A patient told Arkoosh about her experience with transportation issues. Scranton Primary helped her with rides.
"That is just such a consistent problem. So thank you for sharing that," the secretary said.
They also discussed the need for more outreach and education about available services, building trust with refugee and immigrant communities and addressing maternal mortality and morbidity.
Arkoosh said maternal mortality is not an "equal opportunity catastrophe." It dramatically impacts women of color, especially black women, more so than white or Latino women.
"There's a lot of dynamics at play there that we are really trying to understand," she said.
Also, more than half of women who die in connection with childbirth die after the baby is born, Arkoosh said.
Arkoosh attributed the deaths to postpartum depression, substance use disorders or medical conditions that develop during pregnancy, like diabetes or high blood pressure.
Oftentimes women take their babies to doctors appointments and not themselves. And providers do not pay enough attention to women postpartum, she said.
Pediatricians at Scranton Primary also are now screening moms for postpartum depression.
Maternal health is a challenge across the commonwealth, she said. Five counties in Pennsylvania have no hospital that provides obstetric services, including Sullivan and Wyoming counties, according to the March of Dimes. They are considered a maternity care desert.
Arkoosh said the plan won’t be one size fits all.
"The goals of the plan are to describe things that are really best practices that we've seen from around the state," she said.
