- Olivia and Tom Walton pledged an initial $100 million to Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America to help cut U.S. maternal deaths in half — a mission Olivia launched after her own childbirth experience and plans to leverage matching grants to attract more funding.
- The U.S. maternal mortality rate is high (about 19 deaths per 100,000 births in 2023) and especially deadly for Black women (50.3 per 100,000); experts say nearly 9 in 10 maternal deaths are preventable and many happen after the six‑week checkup.
- The effort is pushing bipartisan fixes — from shoring up rural obstetrics to funding NIH maternal‑health research — and backers note that preventing half the avoidable outcomes could save roughly $80 billion a year.
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