Sponsors (3)
Official title: Amend the Public Health Service Act to grow and diversify the perinatal workforce, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 25, 2026 by Tammy Baldwin · Last progress March 25, 2026
The bill aims to expand and diversify the perinatal workforce, clarify coverage (including a one‑year postpartum window), and improve culturally competent care to reduce maternal health disparities, but it requires federal spending and will impose implementation, administrative, and fiscal burdens that may limit scale and create uneven effects across providers and states.
Women in rural, low-income, and high-disparity communities will gain greater access to maternity care because the bill funds targeted training, scholarships, and prioritizes placements in Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs).
Pregnant and postpartum people — including Medicaid beneficiaries — get clearer eligibility and coverage for services (including doulas, midwives, lactation consultants) and an extended one-year postpartum care window, improving continuity of postpartum supports.
Students from diverse and underserved backgrounds and racial/ethnic minority candidates will have expanded scholarship, recruitment, and training opportunities, increasing the size and diversity of the perinatal workforce over time.
Hospitals, insurers, health systems, and state Medicaid programs will face significant implementation costs and operational burdens (hiring, training, billing and credentialing changes) to adopt the bill's workforce, provider-definition, and coverage recommendations.
The authorized federal funding (multiple $15M/year programs) increases federal spending obligations while likely falling short of national workforce needs, creating fiscal trade-offs for taxpayers and limiting program scale.
Grant, reporting, and evaluation requirements place added administrative and compliance burdens on nursing and training programs, schools, and grant recipients who must collect demographic and practice data.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Requires HHS guidance and NIH study, creates competitive grants to grow/diversify perinatal and perinatal nursing education, mandates GAO reporting, and authorizes $15M/year per program for FY2027–2031.
Creates federal programs and reporting to grow and diversify the perinatal workforce and improve respectful, culturally and linguistically congruent maternity care. It directs HHS to issue guidance and NIH to study best practices, establishes competitive grant programs to support accredited perinatal education and perinatal nursing training (with scholarship authority and priorities for diversity and practice in underserved areas), requires recurring GAO reports on barriers and equity, defines key terms, and authorizes $15 million per year for two separate grant tracks for FY2027–FY2031.