After federal funding cuts, Va. maternal mortality data collection to continue until next August

Virginia’s Maternal Mortality Review Team will continue its operations until August of next year. The future of the team, however, will depend on future congressional action and Virginia’s willingness to continue it. That’s because federal funding to support the cohort’s work had already been allocated before it was recently cut from the pending national spending plan.

When Congress shut down the government last week amid stalemates on annual appropriations bills, an effort to extend funding that Virginia uses to address maternal deaths was left out of the legislation. Dubbed the Enhancing Reviews and Surveillance to Eliminate Maternal Mortality, or ERASE MM, nearly $90 million has gone towards state committees around the country that review birth-related deaths and analyze the causes. Committees’ findings have helped spur protocols aimed at preventing hemorrhage, sepsis or suicide of new parents. 

The Virginia Department of Health confirmed that Virginia’s team will continue its data collection until August 31, 2026, since the 2025-2026 funds had already been allocated. U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond told The Mercury ahead of the shutdown that she “absolutely” plans to work on legislation to reauthorize the funding in the future. 

While Virginia collects a variety of maternal health data, the “Pregnancy-Associated Deaths” dashboard is bolstered by the ERASE MM funding, a spokesperson from VDH said, and is slated to conclude by next year. 

According to VDH, the dashboard takes into account a “woman’s life, health, and healthcare utilization in the five years before death.” 

The review team explores the factors that contribute to someone dying during or after pregnancy, whether related to their community, their health before pregnancy, patients’ health care provider, or the facility where they gave birth. According to data collected between 2018 and 2022, 34% of pregnancy-related deaths in Virginia happened during pregnancy and 27% occurred within 42 days of giving birth. Accidental overdoses, cardiac-related incidents and infections were the top three causes that were identified. 

Despite white women outnumbering Black women in Virginia by roughly five to one, Black pregnancy-related deaths nearly doubled that of white women.

Virginia’s review team fits into the slate of recent state efforts to improve maternal health. A series of related bills called the “Virginia Momnibus” — a riff on the term omnibus — passed the legislature this year and were signed into law by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The bills adjusted Medicaid reimbursement rates for midwives and established pilot programs to remotely monitor hypertension. 

Not every bill passed, however, like an effort to require unconscious bias training for health care worker license renewal. If passed, it would help target one aspect of why Black women are more likely to die in childbirth, in which the National Institutes of Health have noted health care workers’ racial bias can play a role. Virginia’s own data collected also shows higher death rates for Black parents. That measure, which has been carried by members of both political parties, passed the legislature before meeting Youngkin’s veto for the second year in a row. 

More broadly, maternal mortality-related data collection has helped inform policies in recent years and garnered the bipartisan support ERASE MM had when then- President Donald Trump signed it into law seven years ago. Earlier this year, Youngkin signaled support for Virginia’s continued work on enhancing health outcomes for new parents. 

While Democrats led on addressing maternal health issues in the state in recent years, Del. Candi Mundon King, D-Prince William, emphasized the bipartisan work in a recent call with The Mercury and stressed how Virginia’s next governor will need to sign a budget that takes broad health care needs into account next year. 

“We’ve worked really hard to say that maternal health, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican,” she said. “If we really want to be a strong, growing commonwealth, we have to take care of our moms.”

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.