University of Michigan Details Findings in Public Health (Medicaid Expansion and Rural-Urban Disparities in Postpartum Medicaid Coverage): Health and Medicine – Public Health

2026 FEB 13 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A new study on Health and Medicine - Public Health is now available. According to news reporting originating from Ann Arbor, Michigan, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Rural residents experience higher rates of postpartum uninsurance than their urban counterparts, contributing to rural-urban disparities in maternal health outcomes. We examined how Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act affected rural-urban disparities in the rates of postpartum health insurance coverage among low-income women.”

Financial support for this research came from National Institute on Aging.

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from the University of Michigan, “We used nationally representative data from the 2010-2012 and 2015-2019 American Community Survey to compare rates of postpartum health insurance coverage among low-income women in states that expanded Medicaid and states that did not expand Medicaid (difference-in-differences analysis). We analyzed changes in disparities in postpartum health insurance coverage between women living in rural areas and women living in urban areas (difference-in-difference-in-differences analysis). Women living in rural areas had the greatest increases in postpartum health insurance coverage, with a 17.0 percentage-point increase in states that expanded Medicaid (95% CI, 13.9-20.2) and an 11.5 percentage-point increase in states that did not expand Medicaid (95% CI, 9.2-13.8). Any postpartum health insurance coverage among rural residents relative to urban residents increased by 4.8 percentage points (95% CI, 2.0-7.7) in states that expanded Medicaid compared with states that did not. We observed similar trends for Medicaid postpartum health insurance coverage specifically. Rural women had greater increases in postpartum health insurance coverage relative to urban women following Medicaid expansion, thereby reducing geographic disparities in health insurance coverage during the postpartum period.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Future research should focus on whether disproportionate gains in health insurance coverage for rural communities led to increased access to care during the postpartum period.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Medicaid Expansion and Rural-Urban Disparities in Postpartum Medicaid Coverage. Public Health Reports®, 2026:333549251403896. Public Health Reports® can be contacted at: Sage Publications Inc, 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320, USA.

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Andrei Stefanescu, Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States. Additional authors for this research include Elizabeth Boggs, Mark Gritz, Rich Lindrooth, Lindsay Admon and Renuka Tipirneni.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1177/00333549251403896. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Publisher contact information for the journal Public Health Reports® is: Sage Publications Inc, 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320, USA.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)