In uncertain times, hospitals and clinics are closing all over the US, while healthcare providers struggle to provide care. Where do patients go to get care, and who can stand in the gap for them?

This is a story about the system we all trust—the doctor down the street, the local hospital, the corner pharmacy—starting to buckle under the weight of economics and policy. It's a story about the haves and the have-nots that often falls along urban and rural lines. It's a story about the dominoes falling, and how decisions made hundreds of miles away ends with hospital and clinic closures, leaving folks without access to healthcare.

35% of American counties designated as maternal health deserts. Maternal care deserts are counties across the U.S. in which access to maternity care services is limited or absent, either through lack of services or barriers to a woman's ability to access that care within counties. Specifically, a maternity care desert is any county without a hospital or birth center offering obstetric care and without any obstetric clinicians. (Source: March of Dimes)

Let's look at the facts.

• Nationwide, more than 400 maternity services closed between 2006 and 2020. (Source: JAMA)
• Rural areas have greater proportions of Medicaid recipients than urban areas, with Medicaid paying substantially less than private insurers for child birthing.(Source: JAMA)
• Areas with no access to maternal care affect over 2.3 million women of reproductive age and 150,000 births in 2022.
• Living in these areas, exacerbated by hospital closures and workforce shortages, heightens the risks of pregnancy-related complications, particularly in rural regions. (Source: NIH)
• Women living in a maternity care desert have a 13% increased risk of preterm birth, backing up previous studies showing that these areas tend to have higher maternal and infant mortality rates. (Source: NBC News)

• A pharmacist who is the only care provider for 50 miles
• A clinic that sends midwives into health deserts
• An association of doulas that supports folks in health deserts
• A KFF researcher on health deserts
• An abortion fund that's helping women in New York access abortion
• An OBGYN who lives in TN but now practices in nearby NC because the atmosphere in TN was too hostile.

Help me spread awareness about maternal health deserts. Let's support the folks standing in the gap and put pressure on our politicians to support pregnant women. Help me fund the following episodes:

• Legal Resources: Your rights and how to protect yourself when seeking medication abortion
• Financial Resources: How to obtain medication abortion at low cost
• What to expect when self-managing an abortion at home: How to take the pills and what to expect in terms of timing, pain, and resources to support.

This is not our first rodeo: Check out our first donor-funded PSA video here.

COST BREAKDOWN PER EPISODE:

Production and filming: $4000 (5 days of filming, including travel)

Post-Production/Editing: $3000

Paid distribution on IG/TT: $2500

FISCAL SPONSORSHIP FEE: 6% of total amount raised ($420)

Total per video: $ 7420

Total for three episodes: $

Christina Anderson is the founder of Runaway Train Productions, a female-founded video production company with a commitment to empowering women and historically underrepresented groups both in front of and behind the camera. Our clients include Pfizer, J&J, Johns Hopkins University, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Mount Sinai Health Systems and more. We create marketing and communications videos for national companies.