Unite Us and Metro Mommy Agency partner to improve maternity care for Black women

The U.S. has a crisis when it comes to maternal health: in 2020, the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. was three times higher than in most other high-income countries. Not only that, but it affects minority families disproportionately, with non-Hispanic African Americans having 2.3 times the infant mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites.

Metro Mommy Agency is looking to close these gaps, improving the quality and coordination of maternity care for Black women in Miami-Dade county by providing increased access to doula services. Now, it will be expanding the services its offers through a newly announced partnership with Unite Us, a technology company connecting health and social care.

The idea is to connect people in need with community-based resources that it would be difficult for them to otherwise navigate.

“Many community-based organizations struggle to effectively collaborate with healthcare providers to send and receive referrals and collaborate on patient progress to improve outcomes,” Damien Graham, Senior Director of Communications at Unite Us, told VatorNews.

“Unite Us offers an easy-to-use software platform that streamlines collaboration for Metro Mommy as they work with partner organizations like hospitals and community-based organizations.”

Unite Us, which was founded in 2013, is a technology company that builds coordinated care networks of health and human service providers to address all determinants of health. The company’s coordinated care networks are built in partnership with community stakeholders and its community engagement experts, who are representative of the communities served, are hired locally, and skilled in collective impact.

Through this partnership, Unite Us will help facilitate referrals between healthcare providers and Metro Mommy Agency, thereby effectively eliminating the time-consuming process for patients seeking maternal care services.

“Pregnant women are faced with a range of needs—from prenatal check-ups to postpartum support. Researching and engaging with various healthcare providers can be a burden, particularly for women in underserved communities who lack the proper time, money, and resources. Many of these patients may not know to seek doula care in the first place, let alone ask for a referral from their primary care doctor,” Graham explained.

The ultimate goal of this partnership, he said, is to make accessing quality care and wraparound services easier within the community and to work with Metro Mommy Agency, healthcare organizations, and community-based organizations to improve access to services and provide their doulas with the technology to provide care coordination for their patients. 

“Our partnership with Metro Mommy Agency is just getting started and we are optimistic about the future,” said Graham.

In addition to its new partnership with Metro Mommy Agency, since 2020 Unite Us has also been working with First 1,000 Days Suncoast, a regional initiative supported by Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, connecting 2,200 mothers and newborns to social, medical, and mental health services. 

So far, Unite Florida has facilitated over 4,000 referrals for social, medical, and mental health services for 2,200 women and children.