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- 7 - accessHealthNews.net January 2024 Volume 10 | Issue No. 80 Our ability to successfully resolve problems, not just as individuals but as a society, depends on the accuracy of our under- standing of the problem. Without compre- hensive data and quality analysis, we lack the critical information needed to make accurate judgments about the source and symptoms of any given issue. The more complex the issue, the more important thorough data truly is to developing a last- ing and effective solution. The cause of human death is one of the most complex types of data to analyze. Such a wide va- riety of variables affect each death that determining the complete cause beyond simply the few words listed on the death certificate requires a full investigation. Attempting to analyze the causes of death on a large scale, then, is extraordi- narily complicated—yet having accurate knowledge of the cause of human death on a large scale is, as one might imagine, of paramount importance for addressing the most urgent problems facing our com- munities. One such problem, maternal mortality, is among the most complex and difficult topics about which to obtain com- prehensive data. Delving into this, the Policy Center for Ma- ternal Mental Health hosted a webinar ti- tled "The Latest in Maternal Suicide Trends" featuring speaker Cindy Herrick, the re- search and editorial manager at the Policy Center, and Joy Burkhard, the Center's ex- ecutive director. The Policy Center's work began in 2018 and centered around ma- ternal suicide tracking with a meeting that included experts in the field of maternal mental health, reproductive psychiatrists, the Association of Maternal Child Health Program, and the Centers for Disease Con- trol (CDC). The CDC informed them that the preg- nancy mortality surveillance system, or PMSS, was being used to track all maternal deaths, not just maternal suicides, around the United States through vital statistics data based on death certificate data. However, this model posed some prob- lems that were thwarted by having state committees examine medical records and death certificate data to find out each person's story. "The gold standard is to do this in-depth review of maternal deaths, including learn- ing if a death might be a maternal sui- cide," said Burkhard. READ MORE Maternal suicides can happen during pregnancy, but most of them occur in the postpartum period—and not in the immediate postpartum period.