Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to tackle stillborn and neonatal deaths for babies from (a) minority ethnic and (b) other backgrounds.
To support National Health Service (NHS) maternity services reduce stillbirth and neonatal death rates for babies from minority ethnic and other backgrounds, NHS England and NHS Improvement published ‘Equity and Equality: Guidance for Local Maternity Systems’. This guidance asks Local Maternity Systems (LMS) to produce an equity and equality analysis, covering health outcomes, community assets and staff experience, by 30 November 2021 and to co-produce an equity and equality action plan by 28 February 2022. The guidance can be found at the following link:
LMS are being asked to include four evidence-based interventions that have been demonstrated to reduce the risk of stillbirths and neonatal deaths in their action plans;
NHS England and NHS Improvement are providing £6.8m to support LMS to implement their Equity and Equality Action Plans.