New Mexico’s Black and Indigenous Maternal Health Policy Coalition began its work in 2020 at a time when the world was ripe for change. The work of New Mexico’s Black and Indigenous Maternal Health Policy Coalition reflects community driven and designed solutions to maternal-child health issues that disproportionately impact Black and Indigenous communities, both locally and nationally. The Coalition operates from a shared equity framework and value system, that uplifts our cultural heritage and the priorities and solutions within our communities. From this vantage point ,we design and implement policy that is culturally congruent with the needs and values of our communities’.
The Coalition has successfully helped to reform New Mexico’s statewide Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC) in several ways including:
The appointment of 8 black and Indigenous people onto the committee
Training in trauma informed thinking, including the trauma of racism for all committee members
Greater disciplinary diversity on the committee
Increased and extensive lived experience among committee members
Group agreements among committee members that the deceased are relatives and not numbers
Open calls for membership
The establishment of term limits for committee membership
Reimbursement for time and thought leadership for committee members
The work of our Coalition reflects emerging values from the CDC and national legislation to ensure that Maternal Mortality Review Committees ( MMRCs) involve community members, reflect multidisciplinary perspectives, and ensure that the communities most impacted can fully participate in state Maternal Mortality Review Committees at every level. Moreover, the work of New Mexico’s Black and Indigenous Maternal Health Policy Coalition reflects community driven solutions to maternal child health issues.
