Resources

Maternal Mortality Review Committees: State Laws and Policies

By Guttmacher Institute

ClinicalCommunityPartnerClinicalPolicyMappingMaternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRC)PolicyPolicy Brief

Last Updated September 2023

Some states first established maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs) to investigate deaths related to pregnancy in the early 20th century, when rates were the highest on record. These jurisdictions reviewed deaths in an effort to understand why many women died in childbirth and to respond to poor medical practices and inadequate care provided by physicians. Many committees became inactive by the late 1980s, following a decline in maternal deaths for several decades. Since 2016, there has been a resurgence of interest in MMRCs because of increased attention on maternal mortality and the disparate rates of death by race, leading many states to renew or strengthen their review of pregnancy-related deaths.

View Now

MHARC is committed to providing reliable, accurate resources that will increase the recipient’s ability to improve maternal health outcomes for all populations in their communities in order to advance maternal health in the U.S. Some of the resources may be primarily informational and others may be oriented more toward capacity-building to implement a program or action. Read our full resource usage disclaimer here.