When the Georgia Health Initiative (the Initiative) asked NORC to assess how the state’s maternal health policy recommendations were being implemented, it was a natural fit for me. Georgia is home—I was born and raised in Atlanta—and being able to amplify the important work Georgia has already been doing while identifying opportunities to do even more has been incredibly meaningful.

The challenge was significant: the Georgia Maternal Mortality Review Committee and House Study Committee on Maternal Mortality made over 30 recommendations for improving maternal health in the state, each with different aims, funding levels, and implementation trajectories. We worked with subject matter experts to narrow our focus to 15 priority recommendations, using an environmental scan and stakeholder interviews to understand not just what the literature said, but how things actually looked on the ground.

What struck me most was how innovative people are at the community and system levels. Take the PEACE program—the Perinatal Psychiatry Education, Access and Community Engagement Program. It’s a public-private partnership between the Georgia Department of Public Health and Emory University providing free consultative psychiatric services to help providers address mental health needs of pregnant and postpartum people that we heard overwhelmingly positive feedback about. This is exactly the kind of local solution that could be scaled statewide, but without systematic evaluation, these bright spots can remain isolated.

We also uncovered significant awareness gaps across all levels—from individual health care users to providers to state agency officials—especially in basic awareness. People often didn’t know about the recommendations or how they could impact their work or the care they received. This highlighted the need for better communication and information dissemination.

Data sharing infrastructures are challenging to create, but necessary to move things forward in a sustainable way. We need more modern technology-enabled models of care, to reduce fragmentation of care and enable more comprehensive storytelling around outcomes, particularly for maternal health.

But here’s what I’ve learned over my career: you can be super smart and “know all the things,” but relationships are the biggest factor that moves projects forward. For me, it’s not just my relationship with my team or my client, but also my connection to the people who will ultimately use our work to make decisions for themselves, their patients, or their communities.

That’s why we approached this project with usability as our north star. We could have written an 80-page technical report covering every nuance of our analysis, but none of our busy stakeholders would have time to read it. Instead, we created a concise report with visuals and clear recommendations for advocates, legislators, and state agency officials who need actionable insights, not academic deep-dives.

The real measure of our success has been watching stakeholders use our findings. The Initiative is breaking the report into vignettes and one-pagers for coalition work. At a recent networking event, someone told me they were already using our report to develop health communication campaigns. That’s the kind of impact we aim for—research that doesn’t just document problems but empowers people to solve them.

• Balance rigorous methodology with practical presentation. Our rigorous methodological approach gave credibility to our findings, but the format of our final report—with executive summary and visuals—made those findings digestible for busy practitioners. 
• Literature reviews don’t tell the whole story. What you read in publications isn’t always what it looks like on the ground. Stakeholder interviews revealed nuances that would have been missed with desk research alone. 
• Local innovations are scaling opportunities. Some of the most promising solutions were community-level programs that could serve as models for statewide implementation with proper support and funding. 
• Awareness gaps are implementation barriers. Even well-designed recommendations fail if stakeholders don’t know they exist or understand how they apply to their work.

• Invest in communication infrastructure alongside policy development. Creating recommendations is only the first step—states need systematic approaches to ensure stakeholders across all levels understand and can implement new policies.
• Leverage non-traditional providers. Both rural and urban areas can benefit from incorporating doulas, midwives, and community health workers into maternal health models, though the specific approaches may differ.
• Modernize data-sharing systems. Technology-enabled care coordination emerged as a persistent need across multiple recommendations, suggesting that infrastructure investments could have multiplicative impacts.
• Document and scale local innovations. Regular evaluation helps identify promising programs that are ready for broader implementation with appropriate funding and support structures.

Looking to the future, I’m excited about how stakeholders use our findings and the other work NORC is supporting to improve maternal health in Georgia. In a parallel study, NORC is conducting a mixed-methods assessment of current federal, state, and local maternal health financing mechanisms and financial investments in Georgia, as well as funding challenges and successes, care delivery priority areas, and performance monitoring. That study includes a literature and policy scan, key informant interviews, and secondary data analysis. It will culminate in a public-facing report, to be publicized in a webinar in January 2026 and ultimately available on the Initiative’s website.