**Forthcoming in Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP) 20.1. All rights reserved.**
ABSTRACT
Background: Pregnancy-associated deaths involving cardiovascular disease (CVD) often occur beyond six weeks postpartum and are associated with delayed recognition.
Objectives: We report on a community-informed approach to create an issue-specific community action team (CAT), which selected and tailored an intervention for CVD in pregnancy and postpartum.
Methods: City-based maternal mortality review committee (MMRC) data on pregnancy-associated deaths involving CVD was leveraged to build an issue-specific CAT.
Results: MMRC data highlighted the high frequency of cardiac-related symptoms as well as hospital-based evaluations among individuals during the year prior to death. The CAT identified and optimized a quality improvement intervention for CVD screening in pregnancy and postpartum. This process integrated feedback from stakeholders from multiple care settings across the city and created a foundation for rapid citywide dissemination of the revised algorithm and supplementary materials.
Conclusions: CATs may be an effective organizational strategy to center community perspectives and build partnerships for intervention development to address pregnancy-associated mortality.