; purposes (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) The United States is ranked 50th globally for its maternal mortality rate, and it is one of eight countries in which the maternal mortality rate has been on the rise. (2) In recent studies, the estimated maternal mortality rate in the United States increased by approximately 26.6 percent from 2000 to 2014, with the rate increasing in nearly all States. This reported increase, along with no improvement in previous years, remains a source of great concern for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), health care providers, and patient advocates such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses, and the Preeclampsia Foundation. (3) Maternal deaths in the United States result from pregnancy-related causes such as hemorrhage, hypertensive disease and preeclampsia, embolic disease, sepsis, and substance use disorder and overdose, and violent causes such as motor vehicle accidents, homicide, and suicide. (4) As of 2017, less than 25 States conduct systematic reviews of maternal deaths and/or have standing maternal mortality review committees in order to develop the data needed to work toward management and solutions. (5) Review of pregnancy-related and pregnancy-associated deaths is essential to determining strategies for developing prevention efforts and quality improvement and quality control programs. The United States must identify at-risk populations and understand how to support them to make pregnancy and the postpartum period safer. (6) The most severe complications of pregnancy, generally referred to as severe maternal morbidity (SMM), affect more than 65,000 women in the United States every year. The CDC uses ICD–9–CM codes, which indicate a potentially life-threatening maternal condition or complication, to define SMM. (7) Data from the CDC shows Black women are three times more likely to die from complications of pregnancy or childbirth than White women: 42.8