Information can save lives. Even children’s cartoons used to say that “knowing is half the battle.”

So, during the fifth Annual Black Maternal Health Week, which runs from April 11-17, I want to impress upon our community that research and data could not be more important to our efforts to close the mortality and morbidity gaps between white and Black parents.

When my fellow members of Congress learn that Black Americans are three-to-four times more likely to die in childbirth than white Americans, they pay attention – even if they’re not paying attention to concepts like structural racism, implicit bias, and social determinants of health.

However, the data also tell us that bias and racism are alive and well in healthcare; or as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who we lost 54 years ago this week, once said: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in Health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

Health care is not equal in our country, and it never has been so we shouldn’t be surprised when that inequality extends to mothers and their children – and the numbers here don’t lie. Unfortunately, we know the truth: maternal health in America is in crisis, and like so many crises, the maternal mortality crisis has hit Black America harder.

As we’ve seen from the COVID-19 pandemic, the adage is true: when white America comes down with a cold, Black America gets pneumonia. In maternal care, Black women are three to four times more likely to die from preventable pregnancy-related complications than non-Hispanic, white women – no matter their level of education or socioeconomic status – even though 60% these deaths are preventable!

What’s worse is for every mother lost there are hundreds of near misses. And annually, approximately 50,000 women experience severe pregnancy complications which result in serious health consequences.

However, because we have this data, we’ve been able to develop policy solutions to address the Black maternal health crisis in America. If we get this work done, we will not only raise the tide for Black women – who are among the most marginalized and the most vulnerable – we will also improve outcomes and care for all women.

My work on this issue started when I joined up with then-Senator Kamala Harris and the Black Mamas Matter Alliance to introduce our Annual Black Maternal Health Week resolution, something we’ve done every year since. Then, in 2019, I joined the youngest Black woman ever elected to Congress, Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, to launch a Congressional caucus focused on Black maternal health.

As the co-founders and co-chairs of the bipartisan Black Maternal Health Caucus, we developed a solution: the Momnibus. The Momnibus is a package of 12 bills to comprehensively address all aspects of the maternal mortality crisis, with a focus on Black parents using reproductive justice as a guide. It is a solution that says, unequivocally, Black mothers matter.

With the support of a historic coalition of nearly 200 health care providers, Black mothers, policymakers, researchers, activists, and maternal health advocates we crafted a collaborative, targeted and timely set of policies to improve maternal health outcomes for Black pregnant and postpartum individuals, particularly during the COVID pandemic. The Black Maternal Health Momnibus will fill gaps in existing legislation to comprehensively address every dimension of the Black maternal health crisis in America.

Throughout the process, we remained very intentional about centering the voices of Black women and ensuring Black woman-led organizations are consulted often. The Momnibus makes investments in social determinants of health, community-based organizations, the growth and diversification of the perinatal workforce, improvements in data collection and quality measures, digital tools like telehealth, and innovative payment models. Finally, in addition to direct efforts to improve Black maternal health outcomes, the Momnibus focuses on high-risk populations, including women veterans, incarcerated women, and Native Americans.

When we reintroduced the Momnibus last year, we went from nine bills to 12 bills because we had to have legislation to address immunization – vaccines – as well as COVID-19. The state of maternal health in this country is a crisis, but with the pandemic, we experienced a crisis within a crisis – and tens of thousands of pregnant women have had to struggle with being pregnant or giving birth while experiencing COVID-19. Two of these new bills in the Momnibus package promote maternal vaccinations to protect the health and safety of moms and babies and invest in federal programs to address the unique risks for and effects of COVID-19 during and after pregnancy.

Last year, we received good news when all the eligible provisions of the Momnibus were included in the Build Back Better Act, which passed the House. The Momnibus provisions in Build Back Better invest in addressing social determinants of health that influence maternal health outcomes; fund community-based organizations working to improve maternal health outcomes; grow and diversify the perinatal workforce to improve maternity care; support moms with mental health conditions and substance abuse disorders; invest in Historically Black Colleges and Universities to train culturally competent health professionals; and address the effects of COVID-19 and climate change on mothers.

That’s a comprehensive approach to this crisis, something we’ve never tried before. However, the Build Back Better Act is stalled in the Senate and will likely be passed in a more limited form, if at all. That is why it is vital for people of conscience across our country to engage with policymakers and ask them to take the Black maternal health crisis seriously. Call your senators and your representatives and ask them to make sure the Momnibus is in the next reconciliation bill. Moms and children are dying, and we must act.

I’ll leave you with this: when we think about how important mothers are, we should recognize that parents touch so many lives, even outside their immediate families. Their threads weave into countless others to form the fabric of our communities. When we lose a parent to this crisis, we lose teachers, volunteers, activists, professionals, caregivers, parishioners, and mommys. When too many threads are pulled, the fabric unravels.

We owe our communities a different future. This Black Maternal Health Week, let’s work together to pass the Momnibus into law.

Our mamas cannot wait.

Alma Adams represents Mecklenburg County in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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