Maternal Health: Funding Cuts Amid an Ongoing Crisis

Photo © Shutterstock

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 […]

2025-05-14T09:36:15-04:00May 14th, 2025|health care policy, Nursing, Public health, women's health|0 Comments
Read More

The Intersection of Human Trafficking and Health Care

Human trafficking (HT) is a global humanitarian and public health crisis. It is a crime that is happening in plain sight with its victims walking among us. Sadly, HT goes grossly undetected because of a lack of understanding, misperceptions, and lack of knowledge about its identification. Although addressed on social media, news outlets, and portrayed in Hollywood films, HT’s reality is often quite different from the sensationalized ways (chains and ropes, abductions by ‘white vans’) in which it is depicted. Victims of HT are frequently held captive through psychological restraints and coercive manipulation rather than overt force, even as they endure egregious acts of abuse that result in levels of trauma equivalent to that of war veterans.

Photo by Rae Angela on Unsplash

Sparing no age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, or geographic location, HT infiltrates all nations and facets of life. It is a financially motivated crime, globally yielding approximately $350 billion dollars annually, an enormous profit that is tax-free and generated off the sale of human cargo.

Human trafficking defined

HT, also known as modern slavery, is a crime against a person for labor or services which compels that individual through use of force, fraud, or coercion. It is the exploitation of […]

2025-03-24T09:58:13-04:00March 24th, 2025|Nursing, Patients, women's health|0 Comments
Read More

Access to Abortion Medications: Why Should Nurses Care?

She sat in my office, tissue in hand, tears rolling down her cheeks as she tried to process the news I’d just confirmed: she was pregnant, and really, really needed to not be. She was living in her brother’s small house, her seven-year-old son with her, sleeping on a sofa while trying to put her life back together after a divorce. She had chronic kidney disease, and had been told that another pregnancy could cause kidney failure.

She didn’t really believe abortion was a good thing to do, but also couldn’t imagine that God would want her to go on dialysis. For the most part I listened, asking a question here and there to help her clarify her own thoughts. Ultimately, she decided on an abortion, so I referred her to the closest clinic, several hours away from the rural town we met in.

Medication Abortion in the United States

By Robin Marty/Flickr Creative Commons

Even before the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion was difficult to access for people living in many regions of the country. TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws forced many clinics to close, making abortion access challenging if not impossible even though every American was legally, constitutionally permitted to make her own decision.

Last year, […]

2023-03-16T09:55:52-04:00March 16th, 2023|Ethics, Nursing, Patients, Public health, women's health|0 Comments
Read More

A Long History of Abortion

Looking to the past for context and perspective as the U.S. abortion care landscape changes dramatically.

The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade ended women’s nationwide legal right to abortion after nearly 50 years.

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

Several states with so-called trigger laws banning abortion moved to implement these immediately. Although some of these laws have since been challenged in court, within a few months it’s expected that women living in about half the states will have very limited or no access to abortion care. Most of these laws—predominantly in the Midwest, South, and Plains states—make no exception for rape or to safeguard a woman’s health, until she is at risk of death.

Limiting health care access amid rising maternal mortality rates.

These restrictions on women’s health care occur while the U.S. continues to have a maternal mortality rate much higher than in other developed nations. According to the latest statistics from the CDC, this rate is rising, and health disparities persist: Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes compared with White women.

Women who have historically been most marginalized will be disproportionately affected by the Supreme Court’s decision, which is expected to […]

2022-07-11T06:31:54-04:00July 11th, 2022|Public health, women's health|0 Comments
Read More

Who Cares for the Nurses Who Care for You?

‘An epidemic of nonstop.’

According to Provision 5 of the American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics, “the nurse owes the same duties to self as to others, including the responsibility to promote health and safety, preserve wholeness of character and integrity, maintain competence, and continue personal and professional growth.” Yet all too often, nurses are viewed as heroes, and this heroization, while perhaps well-intentioned, may exacerbate a reality in which nurses put caring for others ahead of caring for themselves.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a worsening of an issue that has long plagued the nursing profession: “an epidemic of nonstop” in which the lack of basic self-care such as bathroom and meal breaks has become the norm and nurses literally “work until they drop.” The many stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic further heightened the need for nurses to care for themselves.

Workplace benefits and financial protections vary widely for nurses.

Approximately three-quarters of all health care workers, including nearly 90% of nurses, are women. COVID-19 brought to light the gaps in benefits among these workers.

In order to support nurses whose ability to work had been affected by the pandemic by providing them with direct financial assistance through emergency grants, the American Nurses Foundation partnered with

2021-11-10T10:41:13-05:00November 10th, 2021|COVID-19, Nursing, nursing career, women's health|0 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top