KENTUCKY — At the conclusion of this year’s 60-day legislative session in Frankfort, more than 1,200 bills were passed by state lawmakers. Senate Bill 74 is one of those. It reached the desk of Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Ky., where he signed it into law. But like most pieces of legislation, it went through several revisions before making it across the finish line.
On this week’s program, we’re discussing legislation related to maternal health. House Bill 10 started out with the nickname the “Momnibus” bill. It was originally introduced by State Rep. Kim Moser, R-Taylor Mill in northern Kentucky. It advanced out of the house chamber, but eventually failed to move in the state senate, before picking up some steam, as SB 47.
Rep. Kim Moser joins this segment to discuss her work as Chair of the House Health Services Committee and professional background as a retired NICU and flight nurse, and former director of the northern Kentucky Office of Drug Control and how it has helped shape her policy framework to improve maternal health throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum, addressing disparities in maternal health outcomes and finding solutions to enhance health care quality and outcomes for mothers.
“I’ve worked on these maternal health issues and have a very keen interest in all of this how we best support moms and babies in Kentucky and I started doing some research, I actually put together an informal bipartisan work group working group of mostly legislators and some Cabinet members. I worked quite closely with Dr. Connie White and the Kentucky Perinatal Quality Collaborative and we started looking at data around maternal deaths. And we realized that Kentucky really has an abysmal rating in the maternal mortality area that is the number of deaths following childbirth up to one year. Kentucky, unfortunately, is right at about number two in the nation in those maternal mortality numbers. And just knowing that more moms die in Kentucky following childbirth than 48 other states was enough for me to really dive into this and try to understand why,” said Moser.
You can watch the full ‘In Focus Kentucky’ segment in the player above.
