Walton Family Launches $100M Drive to Halve U.S. Maternal
A bipartisan campaign founded by philanthropists Olivia and Tom Walton pledges $100 million over five years to cut the U.S.
A new $100 million campaign aims to make childbirth safer in the United States. The bipartisan Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America initiative, founded by philanthropists Olivia and Tom Walton, plans to cut the nation's maternal mortality rate in half within five years.
Olivia Walton told the Associated Press that maternal health is bad and getting worse for millions. She expressed belief in bipartisan political will to fix the problem, stating part of the campaign's job is to surface that will through an information effort.
The Scale of the Problem
The U.S. Has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among wealthy nations. According to the most recent CDC data cited by the source, 688 people died in 2024 during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. The maternal mortality rate rose to 19 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2024, up from 18.6 the year before. The most recent state-level data is still from 2022.
"You can't fix what you can't measure," Olivia Walton said. Improving data collection is a key pillar of the new initiative. Her nonprofit, Heartland Forward, partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services in May to gather more data from 220 hospitals in a Perinatal Improvement Collaborative.
A Solvable Crisis
Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America President Dr. Neel Shah called maternal mortality "eminently solvable." He argued the biggest cause of suffering is not a lack of knowledge but a lack of execution on existing knowledge. "This is a matter of will," he said.
The initiative will focus on expanding maternal health access in rural areas, training midwives, expanding postpartum care, and helping states adopt proven strategies. Shah pointed to California, which halved its maternal rate by combining strategies with investments. He also noted New Jersey improved outcomes by focusing on cities with the greatest need after previously ranking 47th among states.
A State-Led Strategy
Walton said states are "in the driver's seat" for change, partly because Medicaid pays for about 40% of births. She claimed to have blue-state, red-state, and purple-state solutions that work. The $100 million will be used to encourage state governments to match the investment, with hopes that corporations and other funders will also contribute.
"Taking on risk and going first is a great use of philanthropic capital," Walton stated. "The goal is to prove that this works and then have state funding take it over."
The campaign is also supporting bipartisan federal legislation, including the Rural Obstetrics Readiness Act and the NIH IMPROVE Act, to expand access to care.
Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) called it unacceptable that maternal mortality rates are moving in the wrong direction in 2026. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said poor maternal health outcomes hurt families and carry an estimated economic cost of $165 billion annually.
For Olivia Walton, the issue is personal. She is a mother of three young children living in Arkansas, a state she said has the worst maternal mortality in the country. She believes fixing this issue has broad national implications. "I have an overarching belief that if you take care of mom, she'll take care of everything else," Walton said.
