Company Announcements

Bootheel counties face infant mortality and preterm birth rates significantly above national average, expectant mothers lack timely access to prenatal care

UnitedHealthcare today announced it has funded a $250,000 collaboration with the Missouri Bootheel Regional Consortium (MBRC) designed to advance maternal health outcomes and strengthen relationships between families and provider care teams across Missouri’s Bootheel region.

MBRC is a community‑based organization providing outreach, training and resources to improve health outcomes across Missouri’s Bootheel region. As the primary collaborator on this initiative, MBRC helps identify local maternal health needs through direct community engagement and works to ensure solutions reflect the experiences of mothers and families in the region.

“Being able to see a doctor during pregnancy and postpartum is essential for keeping moms and babies healthy, yet many families in the Bootheel lack that access,” said Jamie Bruce, CEO, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Missouri. “Through community listening sessions with local residents and providers, we heard directly how these gaps affect families. This investment aims to address those needs, including access to care and navigation support, and strengthen the connections between families and their care teams.”

“As part of the national Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) Healthy Start initiative, the Missouri Bootheel Healthy Start program supports case management and connects families to essential resources that improve access to health care. However, gaps remain,” said Cynthia Dean, CEO, MBRC. “We aim to identify and implement strategies to address these gaps through support from UnitedHealthcare, the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality™ (NICHQ) and targeted community engagement.”

NICHQ™, a national nonprofit organization focused on improving maternal and child health outcomes, is also collaborating on the project. NICHQ brings expertise in community engagement, maternal health, quality improvement and systems change to support local partners in translating community insight into effective, evidence‑informed approaches to strengthen maternal and child care.

“We are excited to partner with MBRC and UnitedHealthcare to strengthen maternal health in Missouri’s Bootheel region. At NICHQ, our efforts are grounded in elevating lived experience, building authentic partnerships and ensuring that solutions are shaped by those who navigate these systems every day,” said Stacy Scott, Vice President, NICHQ. “By working alongside local partners in the Bootheel to translate community insight into actionable, evidence-informed strategies, we can help build stronger patient-provider relationships and more responsive systems of care.”

For too many families in Missouri’s Bootheel region, maternal care can be difficult to access and hard to navigate during pregnancy and postpartum care. According to data from Missouri Kids Count, infant mortality rates in Missouri’s Bootheel counties range from 7.6 to 11 deaths per 1,000 live births, well above both the Missouri and U.S. averages, with elevated preterm birth rates exceeding 13% across the region. At the same time, gaps in early prenatal care in counties like Pemiscot, where just 66.8% of pregnant individuals receive first‑trimester care, highlight the need for targeted, community‑driven interventions to improve access to care for expecting mothers.

This investment is one part of a multi-layered strategy to address community health needs in rural Missouri focused on:

• Enhancing support for expectant mothers: Expanding care navigation and service access to help mothers engage earlier in their care journey and receive community-based support.
• Provider training and education: Collaborating with provider partners to introduce training to help strengthen provider-patient relationships and address concerns identified by community members.
• Ongoing community engagement: Establishing structured dialogue sessions, partnership development and continuous feedback loops to ensure solutions remain grounded in lived experience.

This work in Missouri reflects UnitedHealthcare’s broader commitment to investing in communities to help health care work better for families nationwide, including a $7 million investment in 2025 from the United Health Foundation to support maternal health initiatives in Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico and Wisconsin. The company also recently announced the expansion of doula support coverage for eligible members.

UnitedHealthcare serves more than 1.7 million members enrolled in Medicaid, employer-sponsored, individual and Medicare plans in Missouri, with a network of 128 hospitals and over 41,000 physicians and other care providers statewide. For more information on how UnitedHealthcare is working to build healthier communities, visit uhccs.com.

About UnitedHealthcare

UnitedHealthcare is dedicated to helping people live healthier lives and making the health system work better for everyone by simplifying the health care experience, meeting consumer health and wellness needs, and sustaining trusted relationships with care providers. The company offers the full spectrum of health benefit programs for individuals, employers, and Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, and contracts directly with physicians, care professionals, hospitals and other care facilities. UnitedHealthcare is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified health care company. For more information, visit UnitedHealthcare at www.uhc.com or follow UnitedHealthcare on LinkedIn.

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Source: UnitedHealthcare