A nonprofit backed by Olivia and Tom Walton announced a $100 million pledge Thursday to cut the United States maternal mortality rate in half within five years, targeting a crisis that killed 688 people during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth in 2024. The campaign, called Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America, will pour money into rural obstetric access, midwife training, and postpartum care over the next five years.
The United States has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among wealthy nations, according to the Associated Press, as reported by FOX 5 New York. CDC officials, cited in that same report, say the nation's maternal mortality rate climbed to 19 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2024, with the annual totals based on provisional data available through that year. Dr. Neel Shah, president of Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America, said the initiative will develop maternal health access in rural areas, train midwives, enhance postpartum care, and help states build effective plans, per the wire report.
A Bipartisan Push With State Buy-In
Olivia Walton said maternal health is bad and getting worse for millions of American mothers, and that the campaign's information push can help surface political will to fix it, according to the same account. She also said there is bipartisan consensus around addressing maternal health, a sentiment reflected in the campaign's origins: Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America debuted in May 2026 on NBC's Meet the Press with joint backing from Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a Democrat, and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, according to Heartland Forward.
The campaign will encourage state governments to match the nonprofit's investment, effectively aiming to double its impact. The Los Angeles Times reports that maternal and infant health complications carry an estimated $165 billion annual national economic burden, a figure advocates cite to explain why the philanthropic seed money is designed to draw state matching dollars, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Why Rural Hospitals Are the Front Line
Rural access is central to the campaign's strategy, and the numbers explain why. More than 35% of U.S. counties are designated maternity care deserts lacking obstetric clinicians or birthing facilities, and 139 rural hospitals stopped providing obstetric services or announced they would stop by the end of 2026, according to a statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reported by the American Academy of Family Physicians. Only 41% of rural hospitals nationwide still maintain labor and delivery services, per that same statement.
Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America supports the Rural Obstetrics Readiness Act, a bipartisan bill that would extend access to maternal care. The measure, tracked by FastDemocracy, would support training for non-specialist rural healthcare staff and grants for obstetric emergency equipment. The bill would also establish pilot teleconsultation programs connecting rural emergency staff with maternal-fetal specialists.
Indiana has already begun deploying federal dollars toward this exact problem. The state directed $120 million in federal Rural Health Transformation Program grants to eight regional hospital coalitions this month to preserve rural maternity care, as Hoodline reported, with more than three-quarters of the state's maternal deaths found to be preventable.
Federal Research Dollars and Racial Disparities
The nonprofit also supports the NIH IMPROVE Act, a bipartisan measure that would extend access to maternal care through sustained research funding. The bill passed the U.S. House in July 2026 and authorizes $73.4 million through fiscal year 2031 to study maternal mortality root causes and birth equity, according to a March of Dimes issue brief. The initiative targets major killers including cardiovascular disease, infection, and postpartum mental health conditions.
Final CDC data released in March 2026 recorded 649 maternal deaths in 2024, or 17.9 per 100,000 live births nationally, though non-Hispanic Black women faced a mortality rate of 44.8 per 100,000 — more than three times the rate for white women at 14.2, according to the CDC National Center for Health Statistics. Women aged 40 and older had the highest maternal mortality rate of any age group, at 62.3 per 100,000 live births, per the same federal data.
The state-level maternal mortality data cited in the AP's reporting on the campaign's launch is from 2022, an older baseline than the CDC's newly finalized 2024 national figures. More than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable with reasonable changes to clinical care, patient education, or health systems, according to the CDC, with cardiovascular conditions and severe bleeding among the leading preventable causes.
A Model Already Proven in California
Organizers are pointing to a state that has already done this. California reduced its maternal mortality rate by 55% between 2006 and 2013 after establishing standardized emergency response protocols for hemorrhage and preeclampsia through the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, according to Stanford Medicine. The approach treats obstetric emergencies with uniform protocols similar to cardiac arrest care, and campaign organizers plan to replicate it in participating states.
Clinical guidance is also evolving. In April 2026, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel set a new target to treat chronic hypertension in pregnant women to below 140/90 mm Hg to reduce preeclampsia and cardiovascular complications, work that involved a Nashville doctor, as Hoodline detailed earlier this year. Cardiovascular disease is among the leading underlying causes of pregnancy-related fatalities in the U.S., underscoring why that clinical target matters to the broader campaign.
Whether states will move quickly enough to match the Waltons' philanthropic dollars, and whether new funding can close the persistent racial mortality gap facing Black and Native American mothers, remain open questions as the five-year campaign gets underway. The effort adds to momentum around maternal health over the past year.
