ABSTRACT
The United States spends billions annually on health care and hospital costs, yet these peri-natal outcomes have been accepted as status quo for decades. These seemingly intractable, persistent, and obstinate statistics speak to deeper issues. Structural and institutional racism and classism are supported, condoned, perpetuated, and even ignored in the United States of America, allowing these disparities to continue. The first American national push for legislation to address the poor birth outcomes of rural and low-income women was passed and funded in 1921, the Sheppard-Towner Act. The grand midwives were licensed, duly thanked for their service to public health, and summarily “retired,” a trend that continued from the 1930s into the 1960s. The JJ Way system is set up to address health disparities by altering the delivery of health care using the resources that already exist. Any willing and licensed maternal child health practitioner can provide maternity care using this method and still bill fee-for-service insurance when it is available.
