Sepsis Alliance Joins MoMMA’s Voices

MoMMA’s Voices offers opportunities to drive real change in maternal health

Speak up, even if your voice is shaking

Sepsis Alliance, the nation’s leading sepsis organization, is pleased to announce it has joined MoMMA’s Voices, a national coalition of patient organizations and individuals with lived experiences or those who represent them, using their voices to reduce maternal complications in pregnancy and the postpartum period.

With the wave of media and public attention on the growing and unacceptable rates of maternal mortality and severe morbidity in the United States, this coalition answers the need for a strong consumer voice to advocate, amplify, and illustrate these issues in the United States. MoMMA is short for Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Advocates, which captures the coalition’s mission.

Sepsis causes at least 261,000 maternal deaths every year worldwide, accounting for almost 11% of all maternal deaths. According to CDC, 12.7 % of pregnancy-related deaths between 2011 and 2014 were due to infection or sepsis. That makes infection/sepsis the third leading cause of pregnancy-related death in the United States.

Maternal sepsis survivors and their loved ones are encouraged to visit www.mommasvoices.org/individual to share their story, join the training, and use their voice to be a champion for change. If you have already shared your story on Faces of Sepsis, you can simply copy your link into the story section after completing the demographic section of the submission.

MoMMA’s Voices is led by an executive steering committee that includes inaugural members Amniotic Fluid Embolism (AFE) Foundation, Black Women’s Health Imperative, Every Mother Counts, National Accreta Foundation, Preeclampsia Foundation, 2020 Mom, The Shades of Blue Project, and others still to be confirmed.

The coalition’s overarching goal is to provide a home and platform for the patient voice to actively engage in efforts to make childbirth safer in our nation. Issues like patient-provider communications, racial disparities, quality of healthcare delivery, and patient information cut across all medical conditions and heavily contribute to preventable maternal deaths and illness. Most importantly, it will provide training and tools to equip advocates to become effective champions for change.

For more information about MoMMA’s Voices, please visit https://www.mommasvoices.org/. To learn more about maternal sepsis, click here.