Strategic Partnerships

The Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs (IEA) serves as the principal liaison between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and officials of state, tribal and local governments, and non-governmental organizations. Through these relationships, IEA serves as a link between HHS and diverse communities throughout the country.

Current Partnerships

Our current partnerships focus on the Secretarial priority to address maternal health outcomes.

Maternal Health Collaborative to Advance Racial Equity (MaternalHealthCARE)

IEA and the March of Dimes, a 501c3 organization, have initiated a public-private partnership, Maternal Health Collaborative to Advance Racial Equity (MaternalHealthCARE), to improve poor maternal health outcomes specifically among Black mothers, while improving the quality of care for all mothers by driving sustained quality improvement in the hospital setting. Through the public-private partnership, HHS and March of Dimes will exchange information and ideas as to how an initial set of hospitals may be encouraged to increase adoption of evidence-based best practices in their facilities, and expand and scale these practices to a broader range of hospitals in the future.

Newborn Supply Kit

IEA and Baby2Baby, a 501c3 organization, have entered into a partnership to provide a Newborn Supply Kit to provide families with basic physical supplies and relevant information about child development and government benefit programs. The Kit provides initial supplies for diapering, feeding, clothing, supporting proper hygiene, and helping a family through the critical postpartum period. It also includes educational resources on care, feeding, and maternal mental and physical health and recovery, government programs and benefits, and other helpful information to build trust and form a foundation of relationships for further service connections. This partnership is currently being piloted in three states (Arkansas, Louisiana and New Mexico), with plans to scale in the future. The Newborn Supply Kit is one initiative as part of the Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government, which charges members of the President’s Management Council (PMC) to form interagency teams, coordinated by OMB, to designate and assess cross-agency customer life experiences, work to develop measurable improvements for such customer life experiences that involve multiple agencies, develop prospective plans to rigorously test what works, and share lessons learned across the Federal Government. Learn more about the background and origination of the “Having a Child and Early Childhood” Life Experience and Newborn Supply Kit initiative.

About the Office of Strategic Partnerships

The HHS Office of Strategic Partnerships is located within the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs (IEA), an Office of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The goal of the Office of Strategic Partnerships is to achieve policy, programmatic and operational objectives by combining the Department's capabilities and resources with those of our partners from the non-Federal government sector including but not limited to business, non-profit, philanthropic, and academic communities.

The Office of Strategic Partnerships directly answers a call from the President’s Office to modernize and expand public-private partnership engagements. We believe we can achieve more when we partner with others by working towards building and strengthening collaborative working relationships between the U.S. government and non-federal actors. This Office maximizes value by working to collaborate and provide technical assistance across agencies in HHS to strengthen their partnership efforts as well as to work directly with external organizations to build new public-private partnerships.