The impact of severe maternal morbidity (SMM) on mother and children's hospitalization/ ED use one year after birth

Severe maternal morbidity – unexpected mental and physical health conditions resulting from a woman's pregnancy or delivery - has increased dramatically nationally and within NJ. SMM may have a spillover effect on infants' health and initiate a circular causal loop that leads to worse maternal health. This proposal uses a mother-child dyadic analysis to explicitly examine whether SMM affects the child's and the mother's subsequent health as exemplified by hospitalization/ ED visit up to one year after birth. We will conduct subanalyses restricting the outcome to ambulatory care-sensitive conditions which would suggest avoidable hospitalizations. In addition, we will conduct subanalyses to examine whether such effects differ by race/ethnicity, potentially exacerbating racial inequities in maternal and child health outcomes. Note that we refer to all birthing individuals as mothers/females for the sake of brevity in this proposal but we acknowledge that not all birthing individuals identify as mothers or females.