Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health

Our vision is a health care system that routinely detects and treats maternal mental health disorders for every mother, every time. Our goals center around three focus areas: 1. Availability of Providers, 2. Appropriate Screening, and 3. Ample Coverage.

Availability of Providers
Goal: A broad range of qualified maternal mental health providers, so evidence-based care options are readily available to mothers in the U.S. This includes the use of state-certified peer support specialists who can support mothers emotionally through various modes, including text messaging and offer care coordination -assisting mothers with finding in-network mental health providers, for example. This also includes ensuring mental health insurers include adequate numbers of qualified maternal mental health providers in the network and promote and pay for provider-to-psychiatrist consultations. Additionally, mothers must have access to treatment programs along the continuum, not just a mental health office visit or the ER -inpatient treatment programs for mothers and outpatient hospital programs are needed.

Appropriate Screening (Testing)
Goal: Obstetric providers (Ob/Gyns, Midwives, and Family Practice Doctors) adopt a standard protocol for screening using research-validated testing like "screening" questionnaires. We believe that screening should occur early so interventions and care can be implemented quickly. We also believe that screening must be comprehensive to "do no harm" (i.e., incorrect diagnosis, prescribing harmful treatment, or inappropriately sending a mother to the ER). Mothers should be screened for the range of maternal mental health disorders, not just depression. This includes but isn't limited to anxiety, maternal OCD/"intrusive thoughts," and bipolar disorder in certain circumstances. Finally, measurement, reporting, and oversight must be in place to ensure appropriate screening is happening universally for all mothers.

Ample Coverage
Goal: Private insurers and Medicaid plans provide timely access to in-network providers and care without requiring mothers and those who support them to jump through hoops. This includes the promotion of payment reform to support mental health integration in obstetric/primary care and addressing benefit coverage limitations, utilization management prohibitions, and provider network restrictions.

Our Strategies: The Four Cs. Our strategies are bucketed into four categories: 1. Craveable Content, 2. Communities of Practice, 3. Co-Laboratory Projects and Collaborations and 4.

Craveable Content
This strategy builds on 2020 Mom’s track record of curating and communicating cutting-edge content to those we serve. This content is centered around the development of issue briefs and bi-annual “State of Maternal Mental Health in America” reports. Distribution of such content occurs through our annual conference the "Maternal Mental Health FORUM" webinars, blogs, external conference presentations, infographics (including graphic illustrations), storytelling, and social media memes and messaging.

Communities of Practice
We connect change agents working to solve the same problems or who work in similar settings to learn how to close gaps in maternal mental health care efficiently, and together. These communities may include our state non-profit policy fellowship and state and territory public health fellowship programs and the further development of the maternal mental health LinkedIn groups, for example. Certain communities of practice may center around the adoption of the 2020 Mom “Whole Mom” hospital, insurer best practice standards, and checklists.

Co-Laboratory & Collaborations
Our Co-Laboratory is where implementation science comes to life. We experiment and test ideas with partners to find solutions that work (and don’t work). We iterate on learnings and promote wide-scale adoption of solutions that work. We collaborate with critical stakeholder organizations to support the adoption and scaling of solutions. Examples include our collaborations to lift up and propel the use of state-certified peer support specialists to close provider shortage gaps and provide women with just-in-time and welcoming support. Another example is our collaboration with the International OCD Foundation to develop resources for providers to better detect maternal OCD, and invest in research to improve diagnosis and treatment.

Commanding Action
Commanding Action means 2020 Mom will actively push for the adoption of solutions among stakeholder groups. Strategic tactics can include letters, petitions, legislative and legal solutions. Examples include 2020 Mom introducing and passing legislation in California to require obstetricians to screen, and introducing the TRIUMPH for New Moms Act in Congress that calls for the creation of a national strategic plan, coordination of federal agency resources and programs, and recommendations to governors and state legislatures on state-level policy solutions.

We understand the complex U.S. healthcare system.
We are skilled at research and writing and sharing complex problems in easy-to-understand framing.
We have a broad network of cross-sector partners and we are naturals at convening this network in conference and webinar settings.
We understand health policy including the regulatory (state and federal government agency) and statutory/legislative process.
We center the mother in all that we do by lifting up stories to paint a picture of complex problems and their solutions.

We began this work in 2011 when maternal mental health was simply referred to as “postpartum depression” and when the healthcare system was silently failing tens of thousands of mothers and families in the U.S. a year.

In our first ten years, we focused on introducing the problem and framing "maternal mental health" to key partners and the public. We also focused on identifying and sharing barriers and pathways to change.

Our approaches included:
engaging critical cross-sector stakeholders,
coalescing non-profit partners
identifying best practices
creating tools to support change-agents
launching and leading U.S. awareness campaigns
centering mother’s stories
advancing the narrative from postpartum depression to maternal mental health
laying the preliminary groundwork in federal and state policy

Our successes have included:
-Forming the National Coalition for Maternal Mental Health in 2014, which was instrumental in passing the Bringing Postpartum Depression out of the Shadows Act in 2016
-Launching the CA Taskforce on Maternal Mental Health, a multi-stakeholder group that studied and created a state strategic plan, which ultimately led to private and public investments in maternal mental health and the passage of the country's most comprehensive state legislative package.
-Creating the Insurer and Hospital "Whole Mom" standards for maternal mental health, which serve as a guidepost for easy and comprehensive action steps
-Hosting an annual FORUM, for cross-sector change agents, with nearly 1,000 attendees annually
-Launching the first-ever maternal mental health online training program with our partner, Postpartum Support International, training
-Founding and incubating "Mom Congress" a membership and advocacy organization that aims to become the "AARP" of motherhood.
-Launching Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month in May 2015, and hosting the annual social media awareness campaign through TheBlueDotProject with over 20 Million impressions on social media
-Creating and hosting the U.S. Maternal Suicide Awareness and Action campaign in 2018, including urging the CDC to begin tracking maternal suicide rates and supporting additional state intervention.