We have among the highest maternal mortality rates in the country and in the world.

We're not the worst in the Union, and we are improving, but we have a long way to go.

Some of the leading causes of maternal mortality are due to mental health conditions due to suicide and drug overdose infection, particularly during the Covid 19 pandemic.

And that really increased people's risk for mortality, cardiovascular conditions, pulmonary embolism.

Those are some of the more common ones that increase the risk.

Hemorrhage is another important one, and there's also some just important contributing factors to those deaths, with discrimination being a important contributing factor to those outcomes, as well as obesity, mental health conditions and substance use disorders.

If you look at the numbers in South Carolina, if you come from a rural ZIP code, the maternal mortality is twice the rate as it is.

If you live in urban areas.

And I think one of the major pieces of that is just access to care in those rural communities.

And are the people providing the care in those rural communities most up to date on the information that's out there to help identify problems during pregnancy and give the best care?

We've got to take a look at what exist currently in those rural areas and what's currently not in those rural areas.

If we're interested in and at all making any sort of an impact on maternal health in rural South Carolina.

Project Echo South Carolina Pregnancy Wellness is a virtual tele mentoring program that provides up to date, cutting edge, evidence based treatment education for a whole array of reproductive professional health care folks in our state.

We launched the Pregnancy Wellness Echo in 2019, after meeting with state legislators to discuss our state's high maternal mortality rates and the need to increase evidence based care and access to care for folks wherever they live.

In an attempt to break down the barrier of rurality versus urban living, we're trying to get that information out to all providers nurse practitioner, nurses, ER's, all hospitals, all urgent care facilities across the state, including in those rural areas, to make sure that we try our best to level the playing field with what patients have access to in rural versus urban South Carolina.

What I love about Project Echo pregnancy, well, and this is that it is really accessible to everybody that has an internet connection and a device.

So anybody can log on.

The meetings are twice a month.

It's usually at a pretty convenient time mid day around lunch where providers might have a break.

There's usually a case presentation.

There's a didactic on a particular topic and just a lot of discussion.

And it's really about people learning together.

So the people that are facilitating their learning from the community and vice versa, and that just creates a really an incredible group of people that, you know, that you can reach out to when you have questions and increases everyone's knowledge base.

It connects people to community to understand the problems that are coming up.

And the topics that are covered are really driven by the community.

Our virtual sessions are led by experts in the field.

They are providing evidence based best practices to not only OB providers, but also all types of providers.

We work with organizations like Family Solutions, like some of the other community based groups, to ensure that they are involved in these conversations around clinical care.

They are the people that know what moms in South Carolina need most, right?

So why not create a table where everyone can come together and really address some of the barriers to access to care?

I can't say enough great things about the education that is received from being a part of Project Echo.

It's education, but it's also a like a network of support because it gives an opportunity for you to hear different case scenarios and to hear the professionals opinions of other individuals as to how they would have handled a particular situation.

So it helps with learning continue in education.

It helps you to kind of change your perspective on things by having different viewpoints coming from an array of professionals.

You've got MDS, you've got nurse practitioners, you have nurses, you've got social workers, community health workers.

So it's just a number of different people who are giving their voice to particular situations, to just let you see different perspectives, to addressing clinical situations.

One of the things I find to be so effective about the Project Echo model is its method of teaching and learning.

You are not sitting through a webinar simply receiving information.

There are segments and the agenda is broken up into sections so that there is presentation but then there is ample and robust time for questions.

Sharing of information.

Diving into questions of practice that sometimes might not have an answer, but those questions need to be stated so that we can tackle them.

When everyone works together.

When we provide well-rounded and holistic care that moms and families have much better outcomes.

Community members and those with the community organizations, they're the people that the moms trust.

They're the friends.

They're they're the the cousins.

They're the people that we that look like us, that we most identify with.

So by opening lanes of collaboration and communication between these different groups, we're really bringing everybody together so that we can get the entire picture so that when a mom walks into a clinical practice and has an issue, that doctor knows how best to respond in a way that that mom understands.

Really, Project Echo is just about bringing everyone to the table, making sure that everyone has the best, most up to date knowledge, has those evidence based best practices, and that we're all doing our part to improve maternal health outcomes.