The Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center are leading a $25 million initiative to advance maternal healthcare in North Texas – a region that ranks among the highest in the country for maternal morbidity.
Funded by the Episcopal Health Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and several other philanthropic donors, the North Texas Maternal Health Accelerator (MHA) program brings together academic medical centers, hospitals, and community partners to reduce maternal health complications across the North Texas region by 20 percent over the next three years, thereby creating a national model for improving healthcare for mothers and babies.
MHA has already begun its first initiative: distributing iron supplements to women at John Peter Smith Family Health Center. So far, the program has distributed 15,000 bottles of iron pills across 60 clinical and community sites. These supplements help prevent the need for blood transfusions during delivery, a leading cause of severe maternal complications.
Going forward, MHA will develop a series of other initiatives that support mothers, hospitals, and clinical providers. These include implementing standardized simulation training to prepare clinical teams for obstetric emergencies, providing key training resources for doulas, and connecting families with community resources such as the Parent Pass mobile application and the Help Me Grow navigation line. Scholars with MHA also plan to establish cross-system data coordination between hospitals, which ensures providers have access to patients’ complete medical history.
“At the Burnett School of Medicine, we are deeply committed to improving health care access and outcomes for all Texans,” said Stuart D. Flynn, founding dean of the Burnett School of Medicine and the initiative’s principal investigator. “This is collaboration at its best — Texans coming together to help Texas and the entire country.”