Maryland Governor Wes Moore has urged strengthening investment in maternal health initiatives in the US that will support mothers before and after they give birth.

Speaking to NBC News on the occasion of Mother's Day on May 10, Moore, along with Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, spoke about the need to improve access to care for mothers.

Moore, who has served as governor since January 2023, emphasized the need to leverage resources from the government, the private sector, and community organizations to address access gaps.

In light of this, the Maryland Governor highlighted a new partnership his administration entered with The Bridge Project to provide direct cash assistance to new mothers.

The Bridge Project, which has programs in 10 cities, counties, or regions across the country, offers mothers financial support and community resources to assist them during pregnancy and "for the first several years" with their baby.

"It's going to happen for 150 families in the … areas of Maryland that you've had concentrated poverty being a long-term challenge," said Moore, a father of two.

"And it's now coming off the heels of additional initiatives that we pulled together, where we've reestablished the Governor's Office for Children. We've started something called the ENOUGH Initiative, which is actually an acronym that stands for engaging neighborhoods, organizations, unions, governments, and households, which is the nation's first place-based, state-led anti-poverty initiative," he added.

Sanders Urges Bipartisan Action to Improve Maternal Health

Meanwhile, Sanders, who has three children, said she made maternal health a priority after becoming governor, citing Arkansas' consistently poor ranking in maternal mortality rates.

"If we can see these women and help them and support them from the very beginning of their pregnancy all the way through, then we can help address some of these problems, and we can change maternal health," Sanders. "Not just in our state, but across the country."

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Sanders said she convened a strategic working group to identify ways to improve maternal health outcomes throughout the state and was "pleasantly shocked by how many people showed up."

"People that I know actively campaigned against me were some of the most helpful people in developing our strategic plan on how we were going to address this problem in Arkansas," the governor added. "It is something that breaks down a lot of walls. Everybody knows a mom. Everybody has a mom."

The working group led Sanders to introduce the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Act and other initiatives, including the Proactive Postpartum Call Center run through the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which calls women in their first six weeks postpartum to ask and answer questions about physical and mental health.