In July 2019, the Illinois General Assembly did something that did not make national headlines but deserved to. They looked at a crisis hiding in plain sight — Black mothers and babies dying at rates that should have stopped everyone cold — and they said: we are going to study this formally, we are going to name it, and we are going to fix it.
That commitment became Public Act 101-0038. And the Task Force it created has been working ever since.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
| Full Official Name | The African American Task Force on Infant and Maternal Mortality Act |
| Public Act Number | Illinois Public Act 101-0038 |
| Original Bill | Illinois House Bill 0001, 101st General Assembly |
| Date Signed Into Law | July 2019 |
| Governing Agency | Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) |
| Task Force Nickname | IMMT (Infant and Maternal Mortality Task Force) |
| Reporting Obligation | Annual report to the Illinois General Assembly |
| First Report Due | December 1, 2020 |
| Meeting Frequency | Quarterly (minimum) |
| Member Compensation | None — all members serve voluntarily |
| Key Focus Areas | Racism in healthcare, health literacy, social determinants of health, data systems |
| Subcommittees Active | Community Engagement, Systems, Programs & Best Practices |
| Related Acts Passed Same Session | PA 101-0386 (mental health insurance), PA 101-0390 (hemorrhage training), PA 101-0447 (maternal levels of care) |
| Supported by | Illinois Title V MCH Block Grant funding |
The Crisis That Made This Law Necessary
Before you can understand the law, you have to understand the pain that pushed it into existence.
For years — decades, really — Black women in Illinois were dying from pregnancy-related causes at a rate that no one in power seemed willing to treat as an emergency. Black babies were dying before their first birthday at a rate two to four times higher than White babies. These were not small gaps. They were chasms.
In October 2018, the Illinois Department of Public Health released its very first Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Report. It put numbers to what communities had already known through grief. Black women in Illinois were dying at pregnancy-related rates two to three times higher than White women. This was true even when researchers accounted for income level and education — meaning a Black woman with a college degree still faced higher risk than a White woman who never finished high school.
That report changed the conversation in Springfield. The following year, in the 2019 legislative session, a wave of maternal health laws passed. Public Act 101-0038 was the centerpiece.
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What the Law Actually Created
Illinois Public Act 101-0038 created a formal, permanent task force inside state law. This was not a temporary committee or a pilot program. It was written into statute — which means it cannot simply be dissolved when political winds shift.
The full official name is the Task Force on Infant and Maternal Mortality Among African Americans. Most people who work with it call it the IMMT.
The Illinois Department of Public Health runs the administrative side. IDPH provides technical support, staffing, and makes sure the task force can actually do its work. Without IDPH behind it, the group would just be a collection of smart people with no resources.
The law also made clear that members serve without pay. Every person sitting on this task force does so as a volunteer. That matters — it means participation comes from genuine commitment, not a paycheck.
Who Sits on the Task Force
The composition of the IMMT is not random. The law was specific about who needed to be in the room.
The task force brings together a wide range of people who touch maternal and infant health from different angles:
- Healthcare professionals — doctors, nurses, midwives, and other clinical providers
- Representatives from professional associations — groups that speak for entire categories of healthcare workers
- Hospital administrators — people who understand how hospitals actually operate from the inside
- Community leaders and advocates — people connected to the communities most affected
- Public health experts — professionals trained in data, research, and population health
The diversity is intentional. A doctor and a community organizer see the same crisis from completely different vantage points. The law recognized that you need both views to find real solutions.
What the Task Force Is Charged With Doing
The mission sounds simple but the work is enormous.
The IMMT’s core job is to identify the best practices that could actually reduce — and eventually eliminate — the gap in infant and maternal mortality between African Americans and other groups in Illinois.
To do that, the task force:
- Reviews research and data about why these deaths are happening
- Looks beyond just medical causes to social causes — housing, transportation, employment stress, and more
- investigates how racism affects health outcomes, both overtly and covertly.
- Identifies what is already working in other states or countries
- provides the General Assembly with precise, doable proposals
At least one quarterly meeting is held by the task force. Every meeting involves participants reviewing research, delving into data, hearing from subject matter experts, and advancing their organizations. Then, every year, they package everything into a formal report and send it to the state legislature.
That annual report is the task force’s most powerful tool. Lawmakers use it to shape future legislation.
The Numbers Behind the Urgency
The data driving the IMMT’s work is hard to sit with. But it is important to look at it directly.
From 2012 to 2021, Black infants in Illinois died at rates two to four times higher than White, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander infants. That is not a blip. That is a decade-long pattern that did not budge without intervention.
Among the leading causes of infant death — birth defects, prematurity, Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID), and pregnancy complications — non-Hispanic Black infants topped the chart in every single category. Everyone.
One analysis found something especially stark. If the mortality rate for infants born to Black mothers in Illinois could be brought down to match the rate for low-risk White mothers, it would save 204 Black babies every single year. That is 204 families who would not have to bury their child.
For mothers, Black women in Illinois had a severe maternal morbidity rate of 132.4 per 10,000 live births. White women’s rate was about half that.
These are not statistics about poverty. They are statistics about race. Researchers kept controlling for income, education, and access — and the gap remained. That is what pushed the task force to look directly at systemic racism as a driver, not just a background factor.
The Role of Racism: What the Task Force Found
This is the part of the IMMT’s work that took real courage to put in writing.
The task force formally acknowledged in its reports that systemic racism — not just individual bias, but baked-in structures throughout healthcare — is a root cause of what Black mothers and babies face. This is not a political statement.An increasing amount of evidence supports this public health conclusion.
Overt racism means being treated differently or dismissed by a provider because of your race. Covert racism means hospitals located in predominantly Black neighborhoods having fewer resources. It implies that Black patients’ suffering is not given as much attention. It refers to insurance networks that provide unequal services to Black populations.
The task force charged itself with studying how these forces create toxic stress during pregnancy — a documented biological mechanism where chronic racial stress raises hormone levels that damage pregnancy outcomes. This is a real clinical phenomenon, not a theory.
The IMMT explicitly said that fixing this crisis required looking beyond clinical care into education, housing, employment, and the very structure of how healthcare is organized in Illinois.
The Three Subcommittees Doing the Work
The full task force sets direction. The subcommittees do the deep work. Three active groups divide up the mission:
1. Community Engagement Subcommittee This group focuses on how the task force connects with the people it is trying to help. You cannot design solutions for communities without talking to those communities. This subcommittee works to make sure Black women and families have a voice in what the task force recommends.
2. Systems Subcommittee This group looks at the big picture infrastructure — data systems, coordination between state agencies, how information flows between hospitals and public health departments. One of their key findings was that Illinois lacked a unified, comprehensive statewide data system for maternal and child health. They recommended making that a budget priority.
3. Programs and Best Practices Subcommittee This group reviews specific programs — like the Healthy Start program — to see what is working and what is not. They look at programs running in Illinois and compare them to what other states have tried. Then they make recommendations about what to keep, expand, or cut.
Each subcommittee meets separately between full task force quarterly meetings, meaning this work happens continuously, not just four times a year.
The Annual Reports: What Has Been Found
Since the first report in December 2020, the IMMT has produced multiple annual reports that are publicly available through the IDPH website.
The 2021-2022 report highlighted the need for a statewide data infrastructure — a coordinated system where all maternal and child health programs could be tracked, evaluated, and compared. Without that system, the state was essentially flying blind, running programs that might be duplicating each other or missing gaps entirely.
The 2023-2024 report made health literacy a priority focus. The task force found that many Black families were not receiving clear, accessible information about their health rights, pregnancy warning signs, or available services. Language barriers — not just linguistic but educational and cultural — were keeping people from getting help they qualified for. The task force recommended expanding health literacy programs specifically tailored to African American communities.
The 2023-2024 report also flagged that the Healthy Start program in Illinois — a federally funded program designed to reduce infant mortality in high-risk communities — was significantly underused. The subcommittee recommended deeper evaluation of why eligible families were not accessing it.
How This Task Force Connects to Broader Illinois Health Law
Public Act 101-0038 did not arrive alone. It was part of a wave of maternal health legislation that the 2018 mortality report set in motion.
Around the same time, Illinois also passed:
- PA 101-0386: Required insurance companies to cover mental health conditions during pregnancy and the postpartum period — a huge step for perinatal mental health equity
- PA 101-0390: Required all birthing hospitals to provide annual training on managing severe high blood pressure and hemorrhage during childbirth — two leading causes of maternal death
- PA 101-0447: Required IDPH to establish formal levels of maternal care for hospitals, similar to how trauma centers are ranked
- PA 101-0445: Established 19 specific rights for women during pregnancy and childbirth, which hospitals are required to post visibly
The IMMT task force sits inside this larger ecosystem. Its findings feed into this broader system of laws and help identify where new legislation is needed.
Title V and Federal Funding: The Support System
The IMMT does not operate in isolation. Illinois Title V — the federal Maternal and Child Health block grant program administered through IDPH — actively supports the task force’s work.
Title V funding helps pay for the data collection, the technical assistance, the staffing support that IDPH provides, and the development of the annual reports. Without that federal-state partnership, the task force would be a group of dedicated volunteers with no infrastructure.
Each year, Illinois submits its Title V Action Plan to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Those plans consistently reference the IMMT’s recommendations and show how Title V funding is being aligned with the task force’s findings.
This is important: it means the task force’s recommendations actually have money behind them. They are not just words on paper sent to legislators who file them away. They are embedded in how federal maternal health dollars get spent in Illinois.
How the Task Force Meetings Work
The task force meets quarterly, but subcommittee activity happens in between those full meetings. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many meetings have moved online through Webex — making it easier for members from across Illinois to participate without traveling to Springfield.
Meeting minutes are published publicly on the IDPH website. This transparency matters. Anyone can see what was discussed, what motions were made, and what direction the task force is moving.
A chairperson is elected from within the task force membership. Bylaws govern how decisions get made — including rules about quorum for full meetings and, notably, a change that allowed subcommittees to operate with a simple majority of present members rather than a strict quorum requirement. That flexibility keeps the work moving.
Members receive no compensation. Some of these people are senior healthcare professionals, researchers, and hospital administrators. The fact that they show up — quarterly, across years — says something about how seriously they take this problem.
The Connection to Governor Pritzker’s Birth Equity Initiative
The work of the IMMT has aligned closely with Governor JB Pritzker’s Birth Equity initiative. Under this initiative, IDPH awarded $4.5 million in grants to 12 organizations across Illinois providing maternal care with an equity focus.
These grants, ranging from $100,000 to $700,000, specifically targeted communities at higher risk for poor birth outcomes — the exact populations the IMMT has been studying since 2019.
This is what a functioning policy ecosystem looks like. A task force identifies the problems and recommends approaches. A governor’s office builds a funding program aligned with those recommendations. Dollars flow to community-based organizations doing the work on the ground.
What Still Needs to Happen
The IMMT has been clear in its reports that progress requires more than recommendations. It requires resources.
A statewide data infrastructure for maternal and child health does not exist yet in the form the task force envisions. Building it requires dedicated budget allocation — something the task force recommended as a fiscal priority.
Programs like Healthy Start need evaluation and expansion. Communities need more health literacy resources in accessible formats. Healthcare providers need better training on implicit bias and culturally responsive care.
The task force also identified that SUID — Sudden Unexpected Infant Death — disproportionately affects Black babies, often linked to sleep environment factors. Outreach about safe sleep practices is a prevention tool that the task force wants scaled significantly in Black communities.
The problems are known. The solutions are being developed. The bottleneck, as always, is political will and sustained funding.
Final Words
Illinois Public Act 101-0038 and the IMMT task force it created represent something worth understanding clearly. They represent a state government choosing to look directly at an uncomfortable truth — that Black mothers and babies in Illinois face a system that has too often failed them — and then organizing itself to change that.
The task force is not a quick fix. It was never supposed to be. It is a sustained commitment to studying, recommending, and pushing for real change year after year. The people on it show up voluntarily. They produce real reports. Those reports are shaping legislation and funding decisions.
There is still a very long way to go. The data makes that clear. But the mechanism exists. The will exists in those quarterly meetings. And for the families who have lost someone too soon, this task force is one of the clearest signals that Illinois heard them — and intends to keep listening.
FAQs
1. What is Illinois Public Act 101-0038?
It is a law passed by the Illinois General Assembly in July 2019 that formally created the Task Force on Infant and Maternal Mortality Among African Americans. The law charges the task force with identifying best practices to reduce and eliminate the gap in infant and maternal mortality that Black families in Illinois face compared to other groups.
2. What does IMMT stand for?
IMMT stands for Infant and Maternal Mortality Task Force — the shorthand name used by the Illinois Department of Public Health and task force members for the group created by Public Act 101-0038.
3. Why was this law needed?
Illinois data showed that Black women were dying from pregnancy-related causes at two to three times the rate of White women. Black infants died at two to four times the rate of White infants. These gaps persisted even when controlling for income and education, pointing to systemic racism in healthcare as a key driver.
4. Who runs the IMMT task force?
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) administers and provides technical support to the task force. The day-to-day operations are handled by IDPH’s Office of Women’s Health and Family Services.
5. Who are the members of the task force?
Members include healthcare professionals, representatives from professional medical and nursing associations, hospital administrators, public health experts, and community advocates. All serve voluntarily — no member is compensated for their participation.
6. How often does the task force meet?
The full task force meets at least quarterly — four times per year. Subcommittees meet more frequently, with some convening monthly or as needed. Since the pandemic, most meetings are held virtually through Webex.
7. What does the task force produce?
The task force produces an annual report submitted to the Illinois General Assembly. The first report was due December 1, 2020. Reports cover data findings, research reviews, and specific recommendations. Reports are publicly available on the IDPH website.
8. What are the three subcommittees?
The three active subcommittees are: Community Engagement (connecting with affected families and communities), Systems (evaluating data infrastructure and coordination), and Programs and Best Practices (reviewing specific programs and recommending improvements or expansions).
9. What did the 2023-2024 annual report focus on?
The most recent report emphasized health literacy — making sure Black families have clear, accessible information about their pregnancy rights, warning signs, and available services. It also flagged that the Healthy Start program in Illinois was significantly underutilized and recommended further evaluation.
10. Does the task force have the power to change laws?
No. The task force cannot pass legislation itself. Its power lies in its recommendations. Lawmakers use those recommendations to shape new bills, budget priorities, and agency rules. The task force influences rather than legislates.
11. What does systemic racism have to do with maternal mortality?
The task force formally identified systemic racism — both overt bias and structural inequities in healthcare — as a root cause of the disparity in outcomes. Research shows that chronic racial stress during pregnancy affects hormone levels and biological processes that directly impact birth outcomes. Addressing this requires changes in healthcare systems, not just individual behavior.
12. What is the SUID concern the task force has flagged?
SUID stands for Sudden Unexpected Infant Death. Black infants in Illinois experience SUID at disproportionately higher rates. Research links many SUID cases to sleep environment factors. The task force recommends expanding culturally tailored safe sleep outreach in Black communities.
13. How is federal funding connected to this task force?
Illinois Title V — the federal Maternal and Child Health Block Grant administered through IDPH — provides funding that supports the task force’s operations. Illinois’ annual Title V Action Plans, submitted to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), consistently incorporate IMMT recommendations into how federal dollars get spent.
14. Is the task force connected to Governor Pritzker’s Birth Equity initiative?
Yes. Governor Pritzker’s Birth Equity initiative, which awarded $4.5 million in grants to 12 Illinois organizations focused on maternal care equity, closely aligns with the IMMT’s priorities. The grant recipients specifically serve communities the task force has identified as highest risk.
15. Where can I find the task force’s annual reports?
All published IMMT annual reports are publicly available on the Illinois Department of Public Health website at dph.illinois.gov under the Annual Reports section. Meeting minutes are also published there, giving anyone the ability to see exactly what the task force has been working on.
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