Monday, June 05, 2017 6:39:29 AM
Texas lawmakers make few moves to address pregnancy deaths
In this March 6, 2017, file photo, Texas Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, front, backed by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, center, and other legislators talks to the media during a news conference to discuss Senate Bill 6 at the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas. Just months after a high-profile study revealed that Texas has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, state lawmakers failed to respond by passing comprehensive legislation to combat the crisis during the legislative session.
(AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
By MEREDITH HOFFMAN
June 5, 2017
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Lawmakers in Texas largely failed to take any significant action to address the state’s skyrocketing rate of pregnancy-related deaths just months after researchers found it to be the highest in not only the U.S., but the developed world.
Legislators introduced proposals to address the issue after a University of Maryland-led study found that the state’s maternal mortality rate doubled between 2010 and 2012. But several key measures didn’t even make it to a vote, falling victim to Republican infighting over other issues.
“We had a chance to move the needle and we really failed to do so,” said state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican from the town of Brenham, west of Houston. “Certainly, as we develop in medicine, we can do better to take care of women in today’s society versus past societies. I’m very disappointed.”
Because this year’s session has ended, lawmakers will have to wait until they reconvene in 2019 to address the issue.
Kolkhorst introduced a measure with wide support that would have extended the life of Texas’ maternal mortality task force to 2023 from its current 2019 end date, allowing the committee of doctors and behavioral specialists to analyze more closely the specific causes of pregnancy-related deaths.
The task force formed in 2013 to study and combat what state lawmakers already perceived as a rising maternal mortality rate. Then last summer, the University of Maryland study found that Texas had the highest maternal mortality rate in the U.S. The study also found that the U.S. rate was higher than all other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries reporting maternal mortality data, except for Mexico. That study offered no explanation for the reason.
Further research would help understand, “is it hemorrhaging, is it post-partum depression, is it aftercare?” said Kolkhorst. “Are there things we could do pre-birth that would help with post-birth?”
The extension of the task force is “vital for us to be able to understand the causes and preventive measures” of so many Texas mothers’ fatalities, said Lisa Hollier, the task force’s chairwoman.
“The detailed case reviews we are doing are essential to understanding the actual causes of death,” said Hollier, explaining that even though her committee has found that cardiac problems are a leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths, that alone “doesn’t lead to specific information for appropriate intervention programs.”
State Rep. Shawn Thierry sought to look into one particularly disturbing trend that the Texas task force had found: Black women make up 11 percent of births, but 28 percent of death. Thierry, a Democrat from Houston, wanted to compare the risk of black women in different income brackets.
But Thierry’s bill — which was backed by the Texas Medical Association and American Heart Association — died along with a parade of other proposals after tea party-backed lawmakers, protesting a lack of movement of their own pet issues, used a House procedural maneuver to kill every bill on a legislative calendar that wasn’t supposed to generate debate.
“We haven’t done enough,” Thierry said.
Abortion-rights supporters have put at least some blame on strict state requirements for abortion clinics that prompted closures, though supporters of such laws say they protect women.
“When you do things like making access to abortions almost impossible, the impact that’s going to have on our states most vulnerable population is worse and worse,” said Marsha Jones, executive director of the Afiya Center, a reproductive justice organization founded by and for black women in Texas.
Other failed proposals that could have helped with the problem would have extended Medicaid coverage to low-income adults and to mothers for longer post-partum periods, said Adriana Kohler, a senior health policy associate for Texans Care for Children. Still, Kohler praised lawmakers for passing some measures, including one that will require Texas to post guidelines online for reporting pregnancy-related deaths and another that will allow mothers to be screened for post-partum depression for a year after childbirth.
But Hollier said those small measures may do nothing to stop a continuing catastrophe.
“I am concerned that we had the opportunity for some improvements and that opportunity may have passed us by.”
© Copyright 2017 Associated Press
https://www.apnews.com/32d0e301909f4fddba78119aaec8dfef/Texas-lawmakers-make-few-moves-to-address-pregnancy-deaths
*
Texas Lawmakers Failed to Address Rising Pregnancy-related Death Rate During Their Legislative Session
June 4, 2017
The Associated Press reported [ http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/texas-lawmakers-make-moves-address-pregnancy-deaths-47822649 (updated version above)] on Sunday that, months after researchers published findings [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding (excerpted below)]] indicating Texas has the highest rate of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States and the developed word, Texas lawmakers failed to take significant steps to address the issue before the end of their legislative session. Now, lawmakers will have to wait until 2019 to address the state’s skyrocketing pregnancy-related maternal death rates, or, more likely, do nothing about it again.
The recent study, conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland, found that the state’s maternal mortality rate doubled between 2010 and 2012. Nonetheless, Texas legislators expressed a much more robust interest in drafting draconian anti-abortion laws [ http://www.refinery29.com/2017/06/157148/texas-abortion-sb8-law-consequences ] that also prohibit donating fetal tissue to research.
[...]
http://jezebel.com/texas-lawmakers-failed-to-address-rising-pregnancy-rela-1795798472 [with comments]
*
Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world, study finds
About half of Texas lacks ready access to OB-GYN care, making it difficult for women to obtain contraception or for pregnant women to confirm the health of their babies.
As the Republican-led state legislature has slashed funding to reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just a two-year period
20 August 2016
The rate of Texas women who died from complications related to pregnancy doubled from 2010 to 2014, a new study [ http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/2016/09000/Recent_Increases_in_the_U_S__Maternal_Mortality.6.aspx , http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Citation/2017/01000/Recent_Increases_in_the_U_S__Maternal_Mortality.36.aspx , related editorial http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Citation/2016/09000/Drilling_Down_on_Maternal_Mortality.2.aspx ] has found, for an estimated maternal mortality rate that is unmatched in any other state and the rest of the developed world.
The finding comes from a report, appearing in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, that the maternal mortality rate in the United States increased between 2000 and 2014, even while the rest of the world succeeded in reducing its rate. Excluding California, where maternal mortality declined, and Texas, where it surged, the estimated number of maternal deaths per 100,000 births rose to 23.8 in 2014 from 18.8 in 2000 – or about 27%.
But the report singled out Texas for special concern, saying the doubling of mortality rates in a two-year period was hard to explain “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval”.
From 2000 to the end of 2010, Texas’s estimated maternal mortality rate hovered between 17.7 and 18.6 per 100,000 births. But after 2010, that rate had leaped to 33 deaths per 100,000, and in 2014 it was 35.8. Between 2010 and 2014, more than 600 women died for reasons related to their pregnancies.
No other state saw a comparable increase.
In the wake of the report, reproductive health advocates are blaming the increase on Republican-led budget cuts that decimated the ranks of Texas’s reproductive healthcare clinics. In 2011, just as the spike began, the Texas state legislature cut $73.6m from the state’s family planning budget of $111.5m. The two-thirds cut forced more than 80 family planning clinics to shut down across the state. The remaining clinics managed to provide services – such as low-cost or free birth control, cancer screenings and well-woman exams – to only half as many women as before.
At the same time, Texas eliminated all Planned Parenthood clinics – whether or not they provided abortion services – from the state program that provides poor women with preventive healthcare. Previously, Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas offered cancer screenings and contraception to more than 130,000 women.
In 2013, Texas restored funding for the family planning budget to original levels. But the healthcare providers who survived the initial cuts reported struggles to restore services to their original levels.
Indeed, the report said it was “puzzling” that Texas’s maternal mortality rate rose only modestly from 2000 to 2010 before doubling between 2011 and 2012. The researchers, hailing from the University of Maryland, Boston University’s school of public health and Stanford University’s medical school, called for further study. But they noted that starting in 2011, Texas drastically reduced the number of women’s health clinics within its borders.
[...]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding
*
Politics is killing mothers in Texas
Anti-abortion activists rally on the steps of the Texas Capitol.
The state’s maternal death rate is the highest in the developed world. Those denying women reproductive healthcare on ideological grounds are to blame.
23 August 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/23/texas-maternal-death-rate-mothers-reproductive-healthcare [with comments]
--
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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131488509 and preceding (and any future following),
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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131547372 and preceding (and any future following)
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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131892638 and preceding and following
In this March 6, 2017, file photo, Texas Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, front, backed by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, center, and other legislators talks to the media during a news conference to discuss Senate Bill 6 at the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas. Just months after a high-profile study revealed that Texas has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, state lawmakers failed to respond by passing comprehensive legislation to combat the crisis during the legislative session.
(AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
By MEREDITH HOFFMAN
June 5, 2017
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Lawmakers in Texas largely failed to take any significant action to address the state’s skyrocketing rate of pregnancy-related deaths just months after researchers found it to be the highest in not only the U.S., but the developed world.
Legislators introduced proposals to address the issue after a University of Maryland-led study found that the state’s maternal mortality rate doubled between 2010 and 2012. But several key measures didn’t even make it to a vote, falling victim to Republican infighting over other issues.
“We had a chance to move the needle and we really failed to do so,” said state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican from the town of Brenham, west of Houston. “Certainly, as we develop in medicine, we can do better to take care of women in today’s society versus past societies. I’m very disappointed.”
Because this year’s session has ended, lawmakers will have to wait until they reconvene in 2019 to address the issue.
Kolkhorst introduced a measure with wide support that would have extended the life of Texas’ maternal mortality task force to 2023 from its current 2019 end date, allowing the committee of doctors and behavioral specialists to analyze more closely the specific causes of pregnancy-related deaths.
The task force formed in 2013 to study and combat what state lawmakers already perceived as a rising maternal mortality rate. Then last summer, the University of Maryland study found that Texas had the highest maternal mortality rate in the U.S. The study also found that the U.S. rate was higher than all other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries reporting maternal mortality data, except for Mexico. That study offered no explanation for the reason.
Further research would help understand, “is it hemorrhaging, is it post-partum depression, is it aftercare?” said Kolkhorst. “Are there things we could do pre-birth that would help with post-birth?”
The extension of the task force is “vital for us to be able to understand the causes and preventive measures” of so many Texas mothers’ fatalities, said Lisa Hollier, the task force’s chairwoman.
“The detailed case reviews we are doing are essential to understanding the actual causes of death,” said Hollier, explaining that even though her committee has found that cardiac problems are a leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths, that alone “doesn’t lead to specific information for appropriate intervention programs.”
State Rep. Shawn Thierry sought to look into one particularly disturbing trend that the Texas task force had found: Black women make up 11 percent of births, but 28 percent of death. Thierry, a Democrat from Houston, wanted to compare the risk of black women in different income brackets.
But Thierry’s bill — which was backed by the Texas Medical Association and American Heart Association — died along with a parade of other proposals after tea party-backed lawmakers, protesting a lack of movement of their own pet issues, used a House procedural maneuver to kill every bill on a legislative calendar that wasn’t supposed to generate debate.
“We haven’t done enough,” Thierry said.
Abortion-rights supporters have put at least some blame on strict state requirements for abortion clinics that prompted closures, though supporters of such laws say they protect women.
“When you do things like making access to abortions almost impossible, the impact that’s going to have on our states most vulnerable population is worse and worse,” said Marsha Jones, executive director of the Afiya Center, a reproductive justice organization founded by and for black women in Texas.
Other failed proposals that could have helped with the problem would have extended Medicaid coverage to low-income adults and to mothers for longer post-partum periods, said Adriana Kohler, a senior health policy associate for Texans Care for Children. Still, Kohler praised lawmakers for passing some measures, including one that will require Texas to post guidelines online for reporting pregnancy-related deaths and another that will allow mothers to be screened for post-partum depression for a year after childbirth.
But Hollier said those small measures may do nothing to stop a continuing catastrophe.
“I am concerned that we had the opportunity for some improvements and that opportunity may have passed us by.”
© Copyright 2017 Associated Press
https://www.apnews.com/32d0e301909f4fddba78119aaec8dfef/Texas-lawmakers-make-few-moves-to-address-pregnancy-deaths
*
Texas Lawmakers Failed to Address Rising Pregnancy-related Death Rate During Their Legislative Session
June 4, 2017
The Associated Press reported [ http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/texas-lawmakers-make-moves-address-pregnancy-deaths-47822649 (updated version above)] on Sunday that, months after researchers published findings [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding (excerpted below)]] indicating Texas has the highest rate of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States and the developed word, Texas lawmakers failed to take significant steps to address the issue before the end of their legislative session. Now, lawmakers will have to wait until 2019 to address the state’s skyrocketing pregnancy-related maternal death rates, or, more likely, do nothing about it again.
The recent study, conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland, found that the state’s maternal mortality rate doubled between 2010 and 2012. Nonetheless, Texas legislators expressed a much more robust interest in drafting draconian anti-abortion laws [ http://www.refinery29.com/2017/06/157148/texas-abortion-sb8-law-consequences ] that also prohibit donating fetal tissue to research.
[...]
http://jezebel.com/texas-lawmakers-failed-to-address-rising-pregnancy-rela-1795798472 [with comments]
*
Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world, study finds
About half of Texas lacks ready access to OB-GYN care, making it difficult for women to obtain contraception or for pregnant women to confirm the health of their babies.
As the Republican-led state legislature has slashed funding to reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just a two-year period
20 August 2016
The rate of Texas women who died from complications related to pregnancy doubled from 2010 to 2014, a new study [ http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/2016/09000/Recent_Increases_in_the_U_S__Maternal_Mortality.6.aspx , http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Citation/2017/01000/Recent_Increases_in_the_U_S__Maternal_Mortality.36.aspx , related editorial http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Citation/2016/09000/Drilling_Down_on_Maternal_Mortality.2.aspx ] has found, for an estimated maternal mortality rate that is unmatched in any other state and the rest of the developed world.
The finding comes from a report, appearing in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, that the maternal mortality rate in the United States increased between 2000 and 2014, even while the rest of the world succeeded in reducing its rate. Excluding California, where maternal mortality declined, and Texas, where it surged, the estimated number of maternal deaths per 100,000 births rose to 23.8 in 2014 from 18.8 in 2000 – or about 27%.
But the report singled out Texas for special concern, saying the doubling of mortality rates in a two-year period was hard to explain “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval”.
From 2000 to the end of 2010, Texas’s estimated maternal mortality rate hovered between 17.7 and 18.6 per 100,000 births. But after 2010, that rate had leaped to 33 deaths per 100,000, and in 2014 it was 35.8. Between 2010 and 2014, more than 600 women died for reasons related to their pregnancies.
No other state saw a comparable increase.
In the wake of the report, reproductive health advocates are blaming the increase on Republican-led budget cuts that decimated the ranks of Texas’s reproductive healthcare clinics. In 2011, just as the spike began, the Texas state legislature cut $73.6m from the state’s family planning budget of $111.5m. The two-thirds cut forced more than 80 family planning clinics to shut down across the state. The remaining clinics managed to provide services – such as low-cost or free birth control, cancer screenings and well-woman exams – to only half as many women as before.
At the same time, Texas eliminated all Planned Parenthood clinics – whether or not they provided abortion services – from the state program that provides poor women with preventive healthcare. Previously, Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas offered cancer screenings and contraception to more than 130,000 women.
In 2013, Texas restored funding for the family planning budget to original levels. But the healthcare providers who survived the initial cuts reported struggles to restore services to their original levels.
Indeed, the report said it was “puzzling” that Texas’s maternal mortality rate rose only modestly from 2000 to 2010 before doubling between 2011 and 2012. The researchers, hailing from the University of Maryland, Boston University’s school of public health and Stanford University’s medical school, called for further study. But they noted that starting in 2011, Texas drastically reduced the number of women’s health clinics within its borders.
[...]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding
*
Politics is killing mothers in Texas
Anti-abortion activists rally on the steps of the Texas Capitol.
The state’s maternal death rate is the highest in the developed world. Those denying women reproductive healthcare on ideological grounds are to blame.
23 August 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/23/texas-maternal-death-rate-mothers-reproductive-healthcare [with comments]
--
in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131346698 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131488430 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131488509 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131546553 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131547372 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131723525 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131892638 and preceding and following
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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