AHEM is committed to improving maternal and perinatal health outcomes and reducing premature mortality from cardiometabolic diseases through two policy workgroups:
- The Maternal/Perinatal Health Workgroup is focused on improving outcomes for parents and infants in the period before, during, and after pregnancy.
- The Social Drivers of Cardiometabolic Health Workgroup works on improving people's living conditions. These factors can make individuals and communities more likely to develop diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other related illnesses, which are the top causes of death in Massachusetts.
AHEM has two additional workgroups that support the policy workgroups: the Actionable Data and the Access & Community Engagement Workgroups. These two workgroups ensure that AHEM's work is data driven, informed, and community centered.
- The Actionable Data Workgroup is focused on supporting the data and program evaluation needs of the policy workgroups, as well as improving health equity data interoperability and alignment across state agencies.
- The Access & Community Engagement Workgroup is focused on aligning and promoting community engagement across state agencies and expanding existing community engagement structures in AHEM geographies to support the two policy workgroups.
All of AHEM’s workgroups are committed to exploring place-based initiatives and aligning their work with AHEM to advance health equity through policies, programs, and data collection.
The AHEM initiative brings different state agencies together to approach health equity as an ongoing process to improve quality and internal process. By doing this, state policies and practices will better reflect what communities need and want, while supporting community efforts through changes at the state level.