The NIH IMPROVE Act establishes a new research initiative focused on improving maternal health outcomes across the United States. The program, called the IMPROVE Initiative (Implementing a Maternal health and PRegnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone), will be run by the National Institutes of Health and aims to tackle one of America's most serious health challenges: preventable maternal deaths and severe complications during pregnancy and after childbirth.

The initiative has three main goals. First, it will fund research to reduce preventable causes of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity—essentially studying what causes these problems and how to prevent them. Second, it will focus heavily on health disparities, recognizing that certain populations (particularly Black women and other communities of color) experience much higher rates of maternal death and complications than the national average. The program will work to understand why these disparities exist and develop solutions. Third, it will support community-based interventions and research in specific regions of the country to test and evaluate what actually works to improve outcomes for pregnant and postpartum women.

The bill authorizes $73.4 million per year from 2026 through 2031 to fund this work. The NIH Director can award grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements to universities, hospitals, community organizations, and other research institutions to carry out this maternal health research and intervention work.