There are so many people working to try and turn around the crisis Black women are facing when it comes to maternal mortality. One of them is Rep. Emilia Sykes, a freshman member of Congress.
This is an issue News 5 Anchor Courtney Gousman has been following closely in her ongoing series, Delivering Better Results. She sat down with Sykes to talk about her agenda in Washington and learned the congresswoman has a passion for helping moms and infants that stated before she ever worked in politics.
“We were deeply concerned about infant mortality rates, and as we continued those conversations, we realized we weren’t going to have healthy babies without healthy moms,” she said. Sykes decided the next natural step was for her to join the Black Maternal Health Caucus on the federal level. She’s now one of 121 members of Congress that makes up the group dedicated to improving health outcomes and ending disparities for Black moms.
The Momnibus Act was originally introduced in 2020 with nine bills addressing the Black maternal health crisis. Today the package has been expanded to include other marginalized groups like Native Americans and incarcerated moms.