Building data capacity for maternal health equity: Introduction of a novel dataset

This article describes a new, publicly available data resource linking numerous existing datasets and analyses at the county/FIPS code level. Linked datasets include publicly available data on county demographic makeup (e.g., race, population, etc.), social vulnerability factors, and pregnancy-related hospital utilization. It also includes a new dataset, measuring travel time from each county to the nearest hospital for each of four levels of maternal care services. A wide variety of datasets, including population-level health data, are published by the United States Government for public use. While these data sets are immensely valuable for research and can be used to improve healthcare delivery and outcomes, it can be challenging to find, access, and link the data. Maternal health, population health, and demography researchers as well as healthcare providers and health policy experts, can use this dataset to better understand the causes of maternal morbidity and mortality and to improve health outcomes. By linking these varied data sources, this new data resource allows examination of individual contributing factors as well as the interplay between and relative strengths of multiple correlated factors. Additionally, this dataset allows researchers to add any additional data, simply by using FIPS codes for linking.