We were so impressed with the newsletter from Black Mamas Matter Alliance. We would encourage everyone to join their networks your highlights from their previous newsletter.
- Maternal Mortality Review Committees: Sharing Power with Communities. ”This report summarizes the findings of an environmental scan conducted by a project team within the Black Mamas Matter Alliance in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs. The aim of the report is to understand the challenges and opportunities for improvement that community members experienced while engaging, or attempting to engage, with Maternal Mortality Review Committees.”
- A Community Perspective on Maternal Mortality Review Committees, an issue brief centering the perspective of community-based organizations on improving the effectiveness of Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs), as well as recommendations to states on improving the composition and implementation of MMRCs. READ IT HERE.
Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs) are intended to be multidisciplinary committees that conduct comprehensive reviews of pregnancy-related deaths to prevent future deaths. However, MMRCs have struggled to identify, engage, and meaningfully include diverse community members who can speak to the essential context, including the strengths and needs of the communities they represent. MMRCs may express a desire for including community voices and members but this inclusion was often subordinate. More often, MMRCs were perceived to:
> Distrust and devalue the expertise of community members
> Extract knowledge from communities
> Engage in tokenism and quota-filling fromcommunities
> Exclude community members and organizations who challenge the status quo
Black Mamas Matter Alliance Maternal Mortality Review Committees: Sharing Power with Communities.