Quantifying how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated maternal health disparities during continuous postpartum enrollment in Medicaid

Maternal health was a crisis long before the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic only intensified the problem and exacerbated racial-ethnic disparities in maternal mortality (MM). This project seeks to understand how the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) policy, specifically the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCA) that led to continuous coverage for Medicaid-covered births up to 1 year postpartum, affected maternal health disparities and late postpartum maternal mortality. Aim 1 is to develop a maternal cohort in the Medicaid T-MSIS Analytic File (TAF) data. Aim 2 is to quantify how the COVID-19 Pandemic exacerbated severe maternal morbidity (SMM), maternal mortality (MM), and postpartum mental health disparities in the Medicaid population. Aim 3 is to evaluate the effectiveness of continuous postpartum Medicaid coverage in preventing late postpartum MM (42 days to 1 year postpartum) in the Medicaid population. Findings will be applicable to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 which gave states a new option to extend Medicaid to 12 months postpartum (46 states have expanded as of March 2024).