State, local, territorial, and tribal (sltt) partnership programs to reduce maternal deaths due to violence-louisiana - the louisiana department of health, office of public health, bureau of family…

State, local, territorial, and tribal (sltt) partnership programs to reduce maternal deaths due to violence-louisiana - the louisiana department of health, office of public health, bureau of family health (BFH) leads a team dedicated to statewide maternal and child mortality surveillance and prevention. Through the center for disease control and prevention programs such as louisiana violent death reporting system (LA-vdrs), rape prevention education (RPE), and enhancing reviews and surveillance to eliminate maternal mortality (erase MM), BFH knows the impact of violence on pregnant and postpartum women across louisiana. Violence is a leading cause of maternal mortality, a preventable form of death that continues to rise each year in louisiana. From 2016 to 2017, homicide was a leading cause of death among all verified maternal deaths in louisiana at a rate of 12.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. This was two-fold greater than any single obstetric cause of death during pregnancy or postpartum. Racial disparities exist among different types of violent death. Specifically, black pregnant and postpartum women in louisiana were more than five times as likely to DIE by homicide than white women in the same category (40.8 per 100,000 among black women; 7.6 per 100,000 among white women). With this proposal, BFH seeks to reduce and prevent maternal deaths due to violence through the following strategies: 1) improving the identification, tracking, and review of violent deaths in pregnant and postpartum women by establishing a domestic abuse fatality review panel; 2) implementing evidence-based interventions to increase timely access to domestic violence and healthcare services for pregnant and postpartum women; and 3) enhancing louisiana's capacity to sustain implementation and evaluation of interventions to improve health outcomes and reduce deaths of pregnant and postpartum women resulting from violence. Through BFH's surveillance work and management of other fatality review committees, BFH has established partnerships across louisiana including obstetricians, mental health professionals, behavioral health providers, violence and suicide prevention experts, domestic violence experts, and other community-based organizations working to end maternal deaths due to violence. BFH will build upon these longstanding partnerships to inform and support the development and implementation of proposed evidence-based interventions, focusing on populations identified as most disproportionately impacted by pregnant-associated mortality deaths due to violence. BFH recognizes the significant impact of maternal violent deaths in louisiana. This proposal represents BFH's commitment to violence prevention in pregnant and postpartum women through the establishment of a deliberate, more comprehensive review process of maternal deaths due to violence, collaboration with key violence prevention partners to implement evidence-based interventions in the community, and evaluation of these initiatives to inform sustainability to reduce maternal deaths due to homicides and suicides. The deliberate, collaborative approach to designing this proposed initiative demonstrates the BFH and partners' commitments to preventing violence among pregnant and postpartum women.