“A Hundred Small Steps”: Assessing The Effectiveness Of Perinatal Psychiatry Access Programs

Health Affairs September 4, 2024
R. Christopher Sheldrick, Thomas I. Mackie, Karen Burns, Kelsee Fout, Uruj Kamal Haider, Elizabeth Maxwell Hovis, Diane M. Misch, Celeste St. John-Larkin, Sarah Wakefield, Nancy Byatt

According to the White House Blueprint for Maternal Health, “the United States is facing a maternal health crisis,” particularly with regard to untreated mental health and substance use disorders. Many efforts to address this crisis focus on improving evidence-based practices such as screening, assessment, and treatment. While such evidence-based practices are critical, they cannot improve outcomes if they are not implemented by the professionals serving perinatal individuals. Thus, improving the implementation of evidence-based practices for perinatal mental health and substance use disorders is critical to addressing the maternal health crisis.

Recognizing this, perinatal psychiatry access programs (hereafter access programs) were developed as system-level “programs that aim to increase access to perinatal mental health care” by building “the capacity of medical...

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