Health-care advocates are vowing to continue their fight to expand Medicaid in Kansas, despite this week’s election, which expanded the Republican supermajority. Kansas governor Laura Kelly supports expanding the program to more low-income families under the Affordable Care Act, but conservative lawmakers passed a law forbidding the move. April Holman is executive director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas.

“I think the bottom line is we have really been focused on building a grassroots movement that is too large and too loud for policymakers to ignore, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do, even with the most recent election results,” said April Holman, executive director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas.

Data from the Kansas Department of Public Health shows a maternal mortality rate of 11 deaths per every 100-thousand live births. The agency found 13 maternal deaths from 2016 to 2018 and found all but one were preventable. And two-thirds of mothers were racial and ethnic minorities.

“We think that in part that has to do with access to affordable health care, not only later in their pregnancy but also at the beginning and even pre-pregnancy,” said Holman.

The Kansas Health Institute estimates that almost 152-thousand Kansans, including more than 45-thousand children, would enroll in KanCare if Medicaid were to be expanded.