Maternal Health: Funding Cuts Amid an Ongoing Crisis

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The United States continues to grapple with a maternal health crisis characterized by significant racial and ethnic disparities in morbidity and mortality. Maternal mortality rates here are at least double (and sometimes triple) those of most other high-income countries, according to a 2024 Commonwealth Fund report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 80% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable.

Recent data show some improvement in mortality and morbidity but persistent disparities in who is at greatest risk. Pregnancy-related deaths in 2023 decreased to 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births from a rate of 22.3 the year before, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Yet the maternal mortality rate for Black women and American Indian and Alaska Native women continues to be more than three times that of White women.

Federal changes threaten efforts to improve care and disparities 

As nurses and other maternal health providers work to address the complex underlying causes of these disparities, their efforts have been challenged in recent months by rapid and unprecedented federal funding and infrastructure cuts. The Trump administration has suspended Title X family planning and preventive health services funding, initiated widespread layoffs of federal health agency […]

2025-05-14T09:36:15-04:00May 14th, 2025|health care policy, Nursing, Public health, women's health|0 Comments
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Words Matter – Including Those Left Unsaid

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

How often did we as children say these words to those who teased us? Yet we still felt the sting that unkind and malicious words imparted, especially when said by those we trusted. And it didn’t matter if the taunts were untrue—they still hurt.

Words matter—take youth bullying, for example.

Photo by Benjamin Voros/Unsplash

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both bullies and targets of bullying are at high risk for depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. And bullying in nursing is a well-known occurrence and a significant factor in why nurses leave their jobs.

Words matter and are especially important when laws and policies are created.

The words codified in legislation—and those words excluded—dictate funding, programs, and who can participate in the programs or provide them.

Words matter and are especially powerful when spoken by public officials who can influence scores of followers to think and act in certain ways.

I often wonder how many fewer people might have died if more of our leaders had embraced rather than denigrated science-based public health practices during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Words matter when they are used to spread false information or denigrate certain groups.

We’ve […]

2024-10-31T12:54:24-04:00October 31st, 2024|Ethics, Nursing|1 Comment
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Recent Supreme Court Decisions and Public Health Consequences

The overturn of Roe v Wade wasn’t the only decision with health effects.

Photo by Anna Sullivan/Unsplash

In the December 2021 issue of AJN, Caroline Dorsen and colleagues wrote a Viewpoint, “Why Nurses Should Care About the Supreme Court.” In it, they note:

“The court decides cases every year that have direct implications for our patients, our role as health care providers, and our profession. They decide cases that speak to our common humanity and affect the systems that influence health disparities. And we should all care about that.”

This certainly rang true for decisions recently handed down by the Supreme Court.

Other health consequences of the Dobbs case.

While much of the attention on the recent Supreme Court rulings has focused on the overturn of Roe v. Wade (in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization) and the effects that it will have for millions of women on their access to and choice of reproductive health care, we are starting to see many other potential effects of that decision.

An article at MedPage Today describes concerns that physicians may not choose obstetrics as a career because of worries over prosecution—what if a court doesn’t agree with their management of miscarriages or disagrees with their judgment that a mother’s life was in danger? Nurse midwives and […]

2022-07-18T10:19:50-04:00July 18th, 2022|environmental health, Nursing|0 Comments
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June Issue: Cardiac Devices for Heart Failure, Using EHR Data for Research and QI, More

“When nurses practice real self-care, they come to a place of self-respect, learn to hear their own voice, and recognize when their expressed needs are ignored. “—Emily Stice Laker in her Viewpoint article, “Nurses Need More Than Self-Care”

The June issue of AJN is now live. Here’s what’s new. Some articles may be free only to subscribers.

CE: Guideline-Directed Cardiac Devices for Patients with Heart Failure

The author reviews current device therapies for heart failure and uses a composite case to demonstrate how bedside nurses can help patients understand treatment options, potential complications of implantation, and post-op care.

Special Feature: Assessing EHR Data for Use in Clinical Improvement and Research

This article introduces nurses to the secondary analysis of EHR data, first outlining the steps in data acquisition and then describing a theory-based process for evaluating data quality and cleaning the data.

Nursing Research, Step by Step: Diagnostic Studies: Measures of Accuracy in Nursing Research

This article, one in a series on clinical research by nurses, reviews the use of diagnostic and screening tests and tools in nursing research and clinical practice.

[…]

2022-05-31T09:08:10-04:00May 31st, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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What Will It Take? When Will We Act?

Once again, we are sickened by another school shooting and the loss of children and teachers who tried to protect them from being mowed down by an assault weapon in the hands of an 18-year-old boy. This time Uvalde, Texas, is grieving for 19 children and two teachers, and it’s less than two weeks since a shooting in a Buffalo grocery store left 10 dead. Of course, we immediately see the messages from legislators offering their condolences and thoughts and prayers, but no promises to change anything. If not them, then who can?

I remember the awfulness of treating the occasional pediatric gunshot victim when I worked in the ER—usually an unintended target who was caught in crossfire. It was gut-wrenching, the kind of thing that should be a “never-event.” Today, ER nurses, paramedics, and physicians see young gunshot victims far too often. I don’t know how they can do it day after day, trying to comfort parents while dealing with their own trauma.

The leading cause of mortality in children and adolescents.

Firearm deaths are now the leading cause of mortality in children and adolescents (ages 1 to 19 years) in this country, according to a recent analysis by researchers at the University of Michigan reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. How […]

2022-05-27T14:01:41-04:00May 27th, 2022|gun violence, pediatrics, Public health|3 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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