688 People Died During Pregnancy or Soon After Birth—A $100 Million Campaign Aims to Cut the Rate in Half
The United States recorded 688 deaths during pregnancy or soon after birth in 2024. Now a new national campaign is putting $100 million behind a blunt, measurable target: cut the country’s maternal mortality rate in half by 2031.
Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America, founded by Olivia and Tom Walton’s nonprofit Heartland Forward, announced the five-year commitment on Thursday, September 10. The effort is designed to move money toward practical interventions—especially in rural communities—while improving the slow, fragmented data systems that make it difficult to see where care is failing in real time.
The latest figures cited by The Associated Press put the 2024 U.S. maternal mortality rate at 19 deaths per 100,000 live births, up slightly from 18.6 in 2023. The campaign’s promise is ambitious, but its leaders argue that the country already knows enough to prevent many of those deaths.
What the $100 million is meant to do
The commitment is not a single grant or a national medical program. It is intended as “catalytic” funding: money that can help launch and expand projects, attract matching investments from states, companies and other philanthropies, and bring successful local approaches to more communities.
The campaign’s priorities include expanding access to maternity care in rural areas, training more midwives, strengthening postpartum support and helping states put proven maternal-health policies into practice. Those goals address a system in which distance, staffing shortages, insurance coverage and fragmented follow-up can determine whether a complication is recognized early or becomes an emergency.
The rural focus reflects Heartland Forward’s broader work in the center of the country. In many communities, pregnant patients must travel long distances for obstetric services after local units have closed. The new campaign aims to turn that familiar diagnosis into projects whose results can be measured and repeated.
The data gap is part of the health gap
One of the campaign’s most consequential projects may be less visible than a new clinic or training program. Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America is working with a federal Perinatal Improvement Collaborative to collect outcomes from 220 hospitals.
That matters because detailed state-level maternal mortality data currently lag years behind; the newest comparable state figures run only through 2022, while more recent national totals are available sooner. A faster feedback loop could help hospitals and policymakers identify dangerous patterns, test interventions and see whether they are working before another reporting cycle passes.
The campaign is also entering a system in which public policy has enormous reach. Medicaid pays for roughly 40% of births in the United States, according to the AP report. That makes decisions about eligibility, postpartum coverage, reimbursement and rural providers central to maternal health—not peripheral budget questions.
Why the goal is difficult—but not abstract
Cutting a national death rate in half within five years will require more than philanthropy. Hospital practices vary, rural access continues to shrink in some areas, and racial disparities remain entrenched. The country also needs consistent ways to track severe complications that do not result in death but can leave families facing lifelong consequences.
Still, the campaign points to states that have sharply improved outcomes as evidence that the national rate is not fixed. California built a widely studied system for identifying preventable risks and spreading standardized hospital toolkits, while New Jersey has also made maternal health a sustained statewide priority. The lesson is not that one state’s formula can simply be copied everywhere; it is that coordinated measurement, clinical practice and public policy can change the trajectory.
What happens next
The organization says it will support both on-the-ground programs and bipartisan federal proposals, including legislation focused on rural obstetric readiness and maternal-health research. The harder test will be whether its investment produces transparent results: more available care, faster detection of complications, better postpartum follow-up and fewer deaths.
A $100 million pledge cannot by itself rebuild every maternity ward or resolve every inequity. But it can finance the connective tissue between research, hospitals, state policy and community care—and put a public deadline on progress.
By 2031, the campaign wants the U.S. maternal mortality rate to be half what it is today. The clearest measure of success will not be dollars raised or programs announced. It will be how many people return home safely after giving birth.
