内容摘要：AP Business Reporter Dee-Ann Durbin contributed to this report.

AP Business Reporter Dee-Ann Durbin contributed to this report.

“Tulsa is suffering,” said Corrina Jackson, who heads up a local version of the federal Healthy Start program, coordinating needed care and helping women through their pregnancies. “We’re talking about lives here.”Areana Coles listens to Healthy Start care coordinator Krystal Keener during a prenatal appointment at the Oklahoma State University obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Tulsa, Okla., on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mary Conlon)

Areana Coles listens to Healthy Start care coordinator Krystal Keener during a prenatal appointment at the Oklahoma State University obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Tulsa, Okla., on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mary Conlon)Across the nation, programs at all levels of government — federal, state and local — have the same goals to reduce maternal mortality and erase the race gap. None has all the answers, but many are making headway in their communities and paving the way for other places.Jackson’s project is one of more than 100 funded through Healthy Start, which gave out $105 million nationally in grants this year. Officials call Healthy Start an essential part of the Biden administration’s

Other approaches to the crisis include California halving its maternal mortality rate through an organization that shares the best ways to treat common causes of maternal death and New York City expanding access to midwives and doulas two years ago. Several states passed laws this year aiming to improve maternal health, includingin Massachusetts. And last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced more than $568 million in funding to improve maternal health through efforts such as home visiting services and better identifying and preventing pregnancy-related deaths.

Locally and nationally, “we need to really identify the birthing people who are at potentially the greatest risk,” New York City health commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said, “and then wrap our arms around them throughout their pregnancies.”

Besides coordinating prenatal and postpartum care — which experts say is crucial for keeping moms alive — local Healthy Start projects provide pregnancy and parenting education and referrals to services for things like depression or domestic violence. The local efforts also involve women’s partners and kids up to 18 months. And they focus on issues that influence health, such as getting transportation to appointments.“Tuck it in nice and smooth,” murmurs senior researcher Lori Sorrells, pushing to just the right spot without rupturing the egg. Mild electric shocks fuse in the new DNA and activate embryo growth.

Ayares, a molecular geneticist who heads Revivicor and helped create the world’s first cloned pigs in 2000, says the technique is “like playing two video games at the same time,” holding the egg in place with one hand and manipulating it with the other. The company’s first modified pig, thesingle gene knockout, now is bred instead of cloned. If xenotransplantation eventually works, other pigs with the desired gene combinations would be, too.

Hours later, embryos are carried to the research farm in a handheld incubator and implanted into waiting sows.United Therapeutics’ designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., on May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)