Pilot Supports Postpartum Health in Black Moms
Recently, the Innovation Learning Laboratory at Morehouse School of Medicine conducted an evaluation of Mom’s Heart Matters, a maternal heart health pilot launched in 2022 at Liberty Regional Medical Center in Hinesville, Georgia.
What is Mom’s Heart Matters?
The program combats the disproportionately high rates of disease and death among Black mothers with high blood pressure. It builds on the work of two Liberty Regional nurses, Heather Daniels and Sandy Wells, and seeks to create a safety net for postpartum moms by connecting and coordinating care across a number of areas, including:
- cardiovascular health
- medication management;
- mental health;
- substance use;
- breastfeeding; and
- reproductive health.
Mom’s Heart Matters receives funding from Amerigroup and the Annie E. Casey Foundation and partners with Georgia Family Connection Partnership, Georgia OBGYN Society, Morehouse School of Medicine and Liberty Regional — one of two hospitals in the state delivering high-quality obstetric care to rural communities.
The program’s goal is “timely triage and a decrease in inappropriate emergency room visits or hospital readmission,” says Dr. Keisha R. Callins, the initiative’s clinical advisor. “Any mother lost is one too many,” she says. “Mom’s Heart Matters gives us an opportunity to save lives.”
Evaluating Mom’s Heart Matters
The pilot’s key tool, the GoMo Health Personal Concierge, enables new mothers to check their blood pressure regularly, regardless of their physical location, using a Bluetooth-enabled device that is monitored by medical professionals. It is designed to intentionally help moms sidestep common barriers to care, like responsibilities related to “work, school or their children that can make scheduling a visit to a doctor’s office difficult,” says Kristina Sales, a program assistant with the Casey Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site.
As part of the pilot, mothers accessed a health improvement program that promotes heart healthy living and offers screening, education and care coordination with a cardiologist for up to a year after delivery. Higher risk participants received the Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure cuff for live remote patient monitoring and in-home patient care.
Important findings from the Mom’s Heart Matters evaluation include:
- The pilot recruited 91 mothers, roughly 70% of whom were Black.
- The average program duration for participants was roughly 104 days.
- While 19% of enrollees opted to participate in the blood pressure monitoring program, Black mothers accounted for 90% of monitoring program participants.
- In interviews conducted toward the completion of the pilot program, mothers expressed that the program met their needs and praised the convenience of its text-based service in helping them communicate with their health care team.
In 2023, the remote blood pressure monitoring cuff became covered under Medicaid in the state of Georgia because of its use in the program.
“This is great example of ‘targeted universalism’ in the work we do,” says Sales. “This was a tool the Mom’s Heart Matters team used specifically with predominantly Black mothers in our program. Now, Georgia residents regardless of race or gender, can benefit from it.
The Next Phase of Mom’s Heart Matters
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women within one year of pregnancy, according to the Georgia Maternal Mortality Review Committee.
In Georgia, Black mothers are over three times more likely to die during pregnancy compared to white mothers. The leading causes of pregnancy related deaths in Georgia — cardiomyopathy, cardiovascular or coronary conditions, pulmonary embolism preeclampsia and eclampsia — can occur from six weeks to a year postpartum and may be preventable.
Mom’s Heart Matters plans to launch the next phase of its initiative at Emory Midtown Hospital. It will partner with the Center for Black Women’s Wellness to enroll the highest-risk Atlanta moms in the program.
Learn about efforts to lower the Black infant mortality rate in Baltimore
