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Govs Get It Done: Michigan Gov. Whitmer’s Initiative Would Deliver Health Care to 30,000 Women

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Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is working to improve maternal health and infant outcomes in the state. In her proposed budget, the governor has created the “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies” initiative – a new initiative that would expand Medicaid family planning services to 30,000 Michigan women. Women would have access to mental health, chronic illness, and substance use treatment for a full year after the birth of a child. 
Whitmer’s new initiative aims to lower the rate of preventable maternal deaths in Michigan by improving the care women need to have a healthy pregnancy, including combating medical bias against women of color, increasing access to effective birth control, and expanding access to evidence-based home visiting programs.
Read more about how Gov. Whitmer is improving maternal health in Michigan:
MLive: 30,000 more Michigan women would get access to family planning in Whitmer’s budget
A new initiative focusing on baby and maternal health would expand Medicaid family planning services to 30,000 Michigan women, according to a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Detroit Free Press: Improving maternal and infant outcomes a priority in Gov. Whitmer’s 2021 budget proposal
In the 2021 proposed budget she’ll present Thursday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will propose a multimillion dollar investment to enhance health programs for pregnant women, new moms and their children.
The $37.5 million proposal, dubbed Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies, is designed to reduce infant mortality rates and address the racial disparity that exists in care provided to expectant mothers and their babies.
Michigan Advance: Exclusive: 44% of Michigan maternal deaths are preventable. Whitmer has a plan for that.
Detroit’s maternal death rate is three times the national average and pregnant Black women are 4.5 times more likely to die than non-Hispanic white women. And 44% of pregnancy-related deaths were preventable, according to a recent analysis by the Michigan Maternal Mortality Surveillance Committee (MMMS).
Those are some sobering statistics for Michigan that have sparked Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies” plan that she’ll announce Wednesday night during her second State of the State speech at the Capitol.
“I think that making Michigan a place that is a state that is good for moms and babies should be an obvious thing that everyone should promote,” she told the Michigan Advance in an exclusive interview on Tuesday. “We’ve got work to do.”