On March 9th, Congresswoman Robin L. Kelly (IL-02) voted to pass the Fiscal Year 2022 Omnibus Appropriations, which includes her bipartisan bill, the Maternal Health Quality Improvement Act, and all ten of her Community Project Funding requests. The bipartisan Maternal Health Quality Improvement Act includes major provisions from Congresswoman Kelly’s MOMMAs Act and would improve maternal health outcomes by implementing evidence-based practices and support training programs to eliminate biases that affect care for racial and ethnic groups. Additionally, the bill would provide funding to establish rural obstetric networks to improve birth outcomes and reduce maternal morbidity in rural areas.

The Maternal Health Quality Improvement Act would:

• Authorize a grant program to improve maternal health outcomes by developing evidence-based best practices, improving maternal mortality review committee data, and evaluating new models of care.

• Authorize a grant program to address implicit and explicit bias training for health care providers.

• Create a study to develop recommendations for teaching within health professional training programs to reduce and prevent biases that could impact maternal care.

• Authorize a grant program for developing integrated health care services for pregnant and postpartum women and infants, with grants and reporting of study outcomes.