Developing an Interdisciplinary Community Action Team for Reduction in Maternal Mortality Related to Cardiovascular...

Pregnancy-associated deaths involving cardiovascular disease (CVD) often occur beyond six weeks postpartum and are associated with delayed recognition.

We report on a community-informed approach to create an issue-specific community action team (CAT), which selected and tailored an intervention for CVD in pregnancy and postpartum.

City-based maternal mortality review committee data on pregnancy-associated deaths involving CVD was leveraged to build an issue-specific CAT.

Maternal mortality review committee data highlighted the high frequency of cardiac-related symptoms as well as hospital-based evaluations among individuals during the year before death. The CAT identified and optimized a quality improvement intervention for CVD screening in pregnancy and postpartum. This process integrated feedback from stakeholders from multiple care settings across the city and created a foundation for rapid citywide dissemination of the revised algorithm and supplementary materials.

CATs may be an effective organizational strategy to center community perspectives and build partnerships for intervention development to address pregnancy-associated mortality.