Elevance Health Foundation commits more than $14.5 million in maternal health

Today, the Elevance Health Foundation announces the commitment of more than $14.5 million in grants to address maternal health. With a potential to impact a collective 100,000 women, each grant will focus on one or more of the following goals: reducing preterm birth rate, reducing maternal morbidity and mortality, and reducing primary cesarean rate. These grants are part of up to $30 million the Foundation plans to invest over the next three years to make significant progress on improving maternal health outcomes.

For over 20 years, the Foundation has supported nonprofits across the country that share its mission to improve lives and communities. Now building on its longstanding and deep presence in local communities, the Foundation will strategically align with Elevance Health’s focus on community health and becoming a lifetime, trusted health partner to generate even greater impact through measurable health outcomes, particularly for socially vulnerable populations.

This round of maternal health grants is the first of Elevance Health Foundation’s commitment of up to $90 million over the next three years towards maternal health, food as medicine, substance use disorder, and disaster relief, allowing the organization to improve critical health and health equity challenges in communities today.

“Elevance Health Foundation’s focused approach allows us to make a greater and lasting impact in these areas,” said Shantanu Agrawal, M.D., Chief Health Officer of Elevance Health. “Not only will these grants help ensure women and their babies can achieve optimal health and well-being, but they will put us at the forefront of improving maternal and infant health, especially in communities of color, where health disparities have a dramatic impact on outcomes.”

As part of the Foundation’s commitment of up to $30 million in maternal health grants, more than 15 organizations will receive more than $7.6 million over the next three years and begin their maternal health initiatives as the first round of awardees. Organizations include:

• Black Wellness & Prosperity Center
• 18 Reasons
• Marjaree Mason Center
• Public Health Foundation Enterprises (SisterWeb)
• The Morehouse School of Medicine
• Cobb Health Futures Foundation
• Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies
• Life of Hope
• Betances Health Center
• Open Table, Inc.
• CelebrateOne
• Kent State University Foundation
• Capital Centers of Virginia
• Postpartum Support Virginia
• Birth in Color RVA Foundation
• Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service

Each initiative will focus on at least one of the following themes: access to care (e.g., non-traditional settings such as doulas, midwives, etc.); high-touch supportive care programs (e.g., in-home care, virtual care, concierge care, etc.); health related social needs (e.g., addressing implicit bias, removing health-related social barriers, use of digital programming components); and mental health (e.g., offering mental health services/interventions).

In addition to the local grants, the Foundation will award $7 million to Creating Healthier Communities (CHC) to combat disparities in preterm birth rates among Black women. Through the Foundation’s grant, CHC will bring to market a novel point of care tool developed to screen Black mothers for stress and social determinants of health (SDH) correlated to indicators or predictors of preterm births.