Iowa Advocacy Issues and Priorities
2009 Iowa State Chapter Legislative Priorities
1. Access to Health Care Coverage
Access to health care coverage for Iowa’s pregnant women, infants, and children is central to the March of Dimes mission. The Institute of Medicine found that health coverage is the single most important factor in determining whether children receive needed health services, and plays a key role in access to maternity care.
2. Research to Prevent Premature Birth, Birth Defects, and Infant Mortality
States play a vital role in preventing birth defects by maintaining birth defects monitoring programs, which collect data for detecting birth defects trends and suggest areas for fur-ther research. Premature infants are more than 15 times as likely as those not born preterm to die in the first year of life. While specific causes of preterm birth are largely unknown, cer-tain factors are associated with increased risk.
3. Smoking/Alcohol/Substance Abuse Prevention and Cessation Programs Affecting Women of Childbearing Age and Children
Substance use during pregnancy, including smoking, alco-hol and illicit drugs, is a risk factor for adverse birth outcomes, such as birth defects, developmental disabilities, preterm, low birthweight and infant mortality.
The March of Dimes Urges Legislators to:
1. Maintain or increase funding to Medicaid and Hawk-I for Iowa’s women of childbearing age, infants, and children, en-suring that they continue to have access to care, and con-tinue outreach and enrollment to these vital programs.
2. Maintain funding for critical state programs for infants and children, such as: PKU treatment, IA Birth Defects Monitoring program and immunizations.
3. Support HF 234, which requires coverage for substance abuse treatment.
