Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor

Fund doula services for low-income mothers

Not started

487 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“Additionally, since most Doulas’ services are not covered by traditional insurance programs, the Maternal and Child Health program should work to provide funding for low-income mothers.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Nothing the administration did in the window funds doula services for low-income mothers, and the negative is now bounded by enumeration. HRSA's sitemap (2,047 URLs) and MCHB's (321 URLs), enumerated 2026-09-03, contain exactly **one** doula page: *Healthy Start Community Based Doulas Fiscal Year 2022 Awards*, listing 19 grantees at $98,028–$180,000 each, stamped "Date Last Reviewed: August 2022". That is before the window, so it fails the date gate and is recorded here as a read-but-undatable source under §5 rather than as Evidence. MCHB has published **no** award pages for FY2025 or FY2026 at all — its Healthy Start award pages run 2019, 2020, FY2021, FY2022 (doulas), FY2023, FY2024 and stop. **`pre_satisfied` was considered and deliberately not set.** HRSA does fund community-based doulas for low-income mothers through Healthy Start, and did so on 2025-01-20; but the amended rule requires that *nothing in the ask remain outstanding*, and a 19-grantee Healthy Start component is not the Maternal and Child Health program funding doula services at the scale the Quote asks for. The pre-window facts are recorded here so a later pass does not have to re-decide it blind. Cluster negative search B (maternal, child and rural health programs) in the Chapter 14 log covers this item.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Federal Register full text “doula” since 2025-01-20 returns one document, and it is the Defense Department’s TRICARE Childbirth and Breastfeeding Support Demonstration (2026-01-29) - not HHS.
  • Bills among those we keep and search, from congress.gov: two doula bills of the 119th Congress (H.R. 2469 Abortion DOULAS Act, S. 4225 DOULA for VA Act of 2026), both referred, neither about the Maternal and Child Health program.
  • The MCH Block Grant is administered by HRSA. hrsa.gov and mchb.hrsa.gov can be read, though they turn some requests away, and both sitemaps were read in full on 2026-09-03. No Title V or Healthy Start award announcement inside the window exists to read.
Action
expand
Object
Maternal and Child Health program funding for doula services
ID
1358