Surgo Health launches a new initiative elevating women’s lived experiences at scale to inform maternal health action
WASHINGTON , DC, UNITED STATES, March 10, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Surgo Health today announced the launch of the Maternal Health Rapid Response Task Force, a first-of-its-kind initiative designed to deliver near real-time intelligence on maternal health by pairing novel data with women’s lived experiences at scale. The initiative was developed with funding from Pivotal, a group of organizations founded by Melinda French Gates to accelerate the pace of social progress for women and young people in the U.S. and around the world.
The announcement comes as the United States continues to grapple with unacceptably high maternal morbidity and mortality and widening inequities by race, income, and geography. Too often, leaders across the maternal health ecosystem are forced to make decisions without timely insight into how women are actually experiencing care.
At a moment of profound change, including Medicaid policy shifts, rural provider shortages, and evolving reproductive health access, the Task Force will function as a public good, equipping policymakers, advocates, funders, and providers with timely, actionable insights to guide faster and more inclusive action.
“We cannot solve a real-time crisis with retrospective data,” said Sema Sgaier, CEO of Surgo Health. “This Task Force is about listening to women as changes are happening, understanding how policies and systems are affecting their lives right now, and translating those insights into intelligence decision-makers can actually use.”
Where Data Meets Women’s Real Experiences
While maternal health data has traditionally focused on outcomes, the Rapid Response Task Force is built to capture how women experience care in real time and why gaps persist. This approach builds directly on the foundation of Surgo’s Maternal Vulnerability Index (MVI), the first tool to map upstream drivers of maternal health risk at the census- and ZIP-code level using the most granular and current community data available. Unlike traditional datasets, the MVI not only shows where maternal health risks are greatest, but also why those risks exist, and has been extensively validated through multiple studies.
Building on this foundation is Derin™, Surgo Health’s AI-enabled platform that brings this structural context together with real-time lived experience, collecting and analyzing narratives from women navigating pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care at scale. Each Task Force output will combine community-level data from the MVI and real-time narratives through Derin from women navigating pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care, to create clear, accessible insights tailored for public discourse and decision-making. This model ensures that every analysis goes beyond statistics to surface the human impact of policy, access, and system failures, particularly for communities that have historically been overlooked.
A Shared Data Asset for the Maternal Health Ecosystem
The Maternal Health Rapid Response Task Force is designed to serve as a shared data asset for the maternal health ecosystem, filling critical gaps where timely, integrated insight is missing. Guided by an Advisory Board of leaders across policy, care delivery, advocacy, and research, the Task Force will remain responsive to the field, producing analyses in direct response to the most urgent questions facing decision-makers.
Rather than duplicating existing efforts, the Task Force will complement and strengthen them by making its data, insights, and lived-experience findings publicly accessible and easy to use. In doing so, it will help advocates, funders, providers, and policymakers act more quickly and with greater precision as maternal health challenges evolve.
Building Toward Lasting Impact
Looking ahead, the Maternal Health Rapid Response Task Force will provide a reliable stream of timely, equity-centered insight as conditions change. By making women’s experiences visible alongside data, the initiative is designed to support faster responses, more precise targeting of resources, and solutions that better reflect the realities women face across communities. In a moment of rapid change, the Task Force centers women’s voices where they matter most, at the heart of decisions that shape maternal health.
About Surgo Health
Surgo Health is a Public Benefit Corporation building the world’s most comprehensive and insightful AI-powered data platform that reveals the ‘why’ behind people’s behaviors. We uncover the unseen drivers of health—people’s beliefs, barriers, and behaviors—and transform that intelligence into scalable products that enable healthcare organizations to drive impact, reduce costs, and advance equity. From improving clinical trial design to optimizing care delivery and public health strategies, our solutions help decision-makers act on what truly shapes health outcomes. By revealing the human side of healthcare, we’re making it more personal, precise, and effective—for everyone.
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