Maternal Health Equity Linked Datasets

This project links a variety of datasets at the geographic FIPS (county) level to enable maternal health equity research. Data cover a multi-year period across the United States, allowing research and comparison in steady state as well as disasters. Data include demographics, social vulnerability index, hospital utilization for pregnancy-related diagnoses, and travel time to hospitals with varying levels of obstetrics care. Researchers, healthcare providers, and health policy experts can use the data to identify needs and interventions to improve maternal morbidity and mortality, health outcomes, and healthcare utilization related to maternal health equity. The project is unique in that nationwide data are linked for the first time and made publicly available for research. While the majority of the data sources are publicly available, this is the first time they are linked to enable researchers to look broadly across usage/utilization. We also introduce a novel measure on travel time to hospitals/maternal care services for all counties/FIPS codes across the United States, which is only available in this dataset.