Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Healthy Moms, Vibrant Futures’ Maternal Health Strategic Action Plan sounds like a real step forward in helping expectant mothers in rural areas.

Perhaps it’s unfair to expect a problem that has metastasized over the past two decades to be fixed quickly, but in our view Shapiro’s plan doesn’t seem likely to accomplish much in its first year.

And that’s too bad, because there are some 175 soon-to-be mothers in Warren County who we think deserve better.

The plan has several components, but given the recent closure of Warren General Hospital’s labor and delivery unit we’re obviously more concerned with the action plan’s ideas for maternal care deserts.

First-year actions Shapiro is proposing include:

– collaborating with state agencies and other partners supporting rural health care development to leverage existing resources, determine needs, and create collaborative efforts to address lack of maternal care;

– work with Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) to establish current availability of maternity care and related supports and to identify what supports are lacking and how they may be expanded or procured; and

– develop training for emergency medical service, first responders, and emergency department personnel working in areas with limited or no labor and delivery hospitals on how to recognize obstetric emergencies, perinatal behavioral health crises, and other perinatal emergencies.

In other words, the state is trying to wrap its head around the problem and is going to train existing emergency responders to deal with emergency situations involving pregnant women. It’s a band-aid of a solution. Perhaps a better solution comes after the first year. But we find it ironic that in the three months since Warren General Hospital announced closure of its labor and delivery unit, existing providers in the greater New York-Pennsylvania region have come up with a better plan to help pregnant women than the state’s much-ballyhooed plan looks to accomplish in a year.

Perhaps the state should rely on pregnant women to come up with a plan. We have a feeling something concrete would be accomplished in, say, nine months.