Commemorating Black Maternal Health Week

April 16, 2025

Black Maternal Health Week is April 11 through 17, emphasizing the importance of community-driven change, self-advocacy, and efforts to improve Black maternal health outcomes.

The week-long campaign focuses on awareness, activism, and community-building aimed at amplifying the voices and experiences of Black mothers. The theme for 2025 is “Healing Legacies: Strengthening Black Maternal Health Through Collective Action and Advocacy.”

Here are five things to know.

• Black mothers at greater risk: Black women experience three times higher mortality rates during pregnancy, increased instances of premature births and higher rates of stillbirths.
• Building awareness through shared experience:  Black Maternal Health Week focuses on amplifying the stories and challenges of Black mothers.
• Recommendations for improvement:  During January, HAP’s Task Force on Maternal and Child Health shared an action plan for Pennsylvania hospitals and policymakers to improve maternal health outcomes and equity. Among the key recommendations:
  • Growing hospital resources and infrastructure to implement data-driven strategies to reduce racial disparities in outcomes, counter implicit bias, address outside factors that affect health, and engage patients and families in co-designing care.
  • Expanding access to doulas, community health workers, and a maternal health workforce that reflects the communities it serves.
  • Implementing public policies that sustain maternal health care and support proven strategies to improve maternal health outcomes and reduce disparities, such as home visiting and remote patient monitoring.
• Improving quality and equity:  HAP’s report highlighted hospital initiatives throughout the commonwealth focused on improving maternal health equity, such as a Penn Medicine initiative to eliminate inequities in hypertension care and a partnership between Allegheny Health Network, UPMC, and community groups to end preventable deaths of Black mothers and babies.
• Self-advocacy:  “Self-advocacy, at its core, is about recognizing your worth and speaking up for your needs—even in environments where you’ve been taught to stay quiet,” writes Olympian, health researcher, and business leader Ayanna Alexander-Laine in Black Enterprise. “For Black women, self-advocacy can be a literal lifesaver. It’s about asking the hard questions, requesting second opinions, and trusting your intuition when something doesn’t feel right.”

Learn more about HAP’s and Pennsylvania hospitals’ focus on improving maternal health outcomes online.