A recent report from the March of Dimes delivered a report on maternity access and care. According to the report, Daggett County and Moffat County are both designated as ‘maternity care deserts’, while Uintah and Duchesne Counties are labeled as areas with ‘low access to care’. The report itself evaluated every county in the United States to determine the level of accessibility it has to maternity care. The report states that “a county was classified as a ‘maternity care desert’ if there were no hospitals providing obstetric care, no birth centers, no OB/GYN and no certified nurse midwives.” The county was categorized as “having low access to maternity care services if there was one or less hospital offering OB service and fewer than 60 OB providers per 10,000 births, and the proportion of women without health insurance was 10 percent or greater.” It was determined that 36% of all counties in the U.S. meet the maternity care deserts criteria with two-thirds of those being in rural counties. Based on their report, the March of Dimes is making four policy recommendations to congress and state government to help reduce ‘maternity care deserts’.
