Joy Burkhard, Founder and Executive Director, talks about her motivation behind creating 2020 Mom.

This Glamour Magazine article, describing a new mom who lost the fight with maternal mental health, inspired our work.

Learn about 2020 Mom’s National Maternal Mental Health Landscape Overview including the Barriers to Screening and Treatment, in this 22 minute video.

Our Mission

To close gaps in maternal mental health care.

Our Vision

All pregnant and postpartum mothers have ready access to standardized, evidence-based maternal mental health care from providers they respect and trust.

The Problem We Are Here to Solve

Maternal Mental Health disorders, which are the most common complication of pregnancy, impact up to 1 in 5 of the expecting and postpartum mothers in the U.S. Though awareness of these disorders has increased substantially, most screening, diagnosis, and treatment is still not standardized and routine across the U.S. health delivery system. Learn more here.

Our History

In our first 10 years, 2020 Mom surveyed and shared the national landscape, identified the complex barriers to care, convened multi-sector change agents, identified best practices, and led substantive state and federal policy work.

We were founded in 2011 as the California Maternal Mental Health Collaborative. After launching the national “2020 Mom Project” (which explained a path forward with easy action steps hospitals, providers and payers could take) and being referred to as the 2020 Mom Project, the Collaborative changed its name to “2020 Mom,” maintaining its focus on multi-stakeholder engagement and policy as a lever for change and laying a path forward for the entire country.

We began this work in 2011 when maternal mental health was simply referred to as “postpartum depression”; when diagnosis and treatment rates were not measured, and the healthcare system was silently failing tens of thousands of mothers and families in the U.S. a year.

Our aim was to shine a light on the problem, change the narrative from calling the range of disorders “postpartum depression” to “Maternal Mental Health Disorders” and identify the barriers and solutions together with multiple stakeholders.

We wanted to lay this groundwork for maternal mental health by the year 2020. In the Fall of 2021, when 2020 Mom turned 10 years old, we celebrated the field having successfully laid this foundation and unveiled our 3-year strategic plan and new logo/tagline.

Our new branding incorporated "20/20" in its logo and the tagline "Visionaries for the Future of Maternal Mental Health."

What Makes Us Unique

We have expertise in the role healthcare payers (employers and state Medicaid agencies), health insurers, and managed care organizations have in effectuating change in the U.S. health delivery system.

We have a track record for both collaborating with and convening multiple cross-sector stakeholders to advance maternal mental health policy solutions, and for further prioritizing maternal mental health for these partners through legislative change.

Our Strategy

While our first 10 years focused on elevating maternal mental health and the complex barriers, our next 10 years will focus on doubling down on the implementation of solutions.

We looked at our unique strengths and assets, where gaps remain in the field, and how we can line up our strengths to tackle them.

To that end, from 2022-2025, we will focus on three strategies, which we call our “3 As”: