Sponsors (3)
The bill aims to expand and diversify the perinatal workforce and clarify Medicaid coverage to improve maternal care access and equity, but does so with new federal spending and substantial implementation and administrative burdens that may strain providers, small programs, and state systems and may not fully meet national demand.
Pregnant and postpartum people — especially those in rural areas, low-income groups, and racial/ethnic minority communities — will have improved access to maternity and perinatal care due to expanded training, recruitment, scholarships, and integration of midwives, PAs, perinatal health workers, and doulas into care teams.
Students from diverse and underserved backgrounds and clinicians will benefit from scholarships, targeted recruitment, and bias/racism training, increasing workforce diversity and cultural competency of perinatal care.
Health workforce supply and training pipelines will be expanded through grant-funded training programs, clinical partnerships, and education pipeline gap analysis, improving the long-term availability of perinatal clinicians (midwives, PAs, nurse practitioners, etc.).
Hospitals, insurers, providers, and state Medicaid agencies — and ultimately patients and taxpayers — will face substantial implementation costs and administrative burdens to update hiring, credentialing, billing, and reporting systems to accommodate new workforce standards and provider categories.
Taxpayers and federal budgets will absorb new spending commitments (including the authorized $15M/year scholarships/grants and ongoing GAO work), which could increase deficits or require offsets elsewhere in federal spending.
The level of authorized and competitive grant funding may be too limited to meet nationwide demand, so intended workforce expansion may fall short of addressing shortages in many high‑need areas.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Creates grant programs, guidance, studies, and reports to grow and diversify the perinatal workforce and to promote culturally and linguistically congruent maternity care.
Introduced March 25, 2026 by Tammy Baldwin · Last progress March 25, 2026
Creates federal programs and guidance to grow, diversify, and better train the perinatal workforce and to improve respectful, culturally and linguistically congruent maternity care. It directs HHS and NIH to produce guidance and a study on best practices, establishes competitive grant programs for midwifery, perinatal training, and perinatal nursing education (including scholarships), requires GAO evaluations of barriers to maternal health education and access, and adds definitional language for perinatal roles and care. Sets priorities for recruiting and supporting racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students and providers, encourages practice in high-need areas, requires bias/racism training in curricula, authorizes funding ($15 million annually each for two programs for FY2027–FY2031), and creates reporting and technical-assistance requirements for grantees and federal agencies.