Bills › 89th General Assembly
Creating the dignity in pregnancy and childbirth Act
Where it is now
- Done: IntroducedFebruary 10, 2021
- Stopped: SubcommitteeDied when the General Assembly ended
- Next: House committee
- Next: Passes the House
- Next: Senate committee
- Next: Passes the Senate
- Next: To the Governor
- Next: Signed into law
Died when the session ended The 2022 session adjourned on May 24, 2022, the General Assembly’s last regular session. Bills that didn’t pass both chambers died. What’s a funnel?
What’s in it
This bill creates the dignity in pregnancy and childbirth Act. The bill includes legislative findings and intent. The bill creates new Code chapter 135Q, to be known and cited as “The Iowa Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act”. The bill includes definitions including those for “implicit bias”, “implicit prejudice”, “implicit stereotypes”, and “pregnancy-related death”. The bill requires a hospital or a primary care clinic that provides perinatal care and a birth center to implement an evidence-based implicit bias training program for all health care professionals involved in providing care to patients within the facility.
Read the full explanation
The bill specifies the information to be included in the implicit bias training program, and requires a health care professional, whether or not directly employed by a facility specified in the bill, providing perinatal care in such facility, to complete both initial implicit bias training and a refresher course every two years thereafter, or more frequently if deemed necessary by the facility. The facility shall provide a certificate of training completion to a health care professional or to another such facility upon request and a facility may accept a certificate of completion from another facility as evidence of satisfactory completion of the training requirement by a health care professional who practices in more than one facility. The bill requires the department of public health (DPH) to collect data on severe maternal morbidity including morbidity involving certain health conditions and requires DPH to track data on pregnancy-related deaths, including but not limited to the deaths resulting from the specified conditions, indirect obstetric deaths, and other maternal disorders predominately related to pregnancy and complications predominantly related to puerperium. The data collected shall be published at least once every three years after the data has been aggregated by state regions or other areas as defined by the DPH to ensure the data reflects how regionalized care systems are or should be collaborating to improve maternal health outcomes and after the data has been disaggregated by racial and ethnic identity.