Benefits leaders spend months on premiums, renewals, and network changes, yet one population remains a recurring blind spot: pregnant employees. Flu and whooping cough vaccines are safe and recommended during pregnancy, backed by the CDC and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Still, CDC survey data for the 2023-24 season show 47.4% of pregnant women received a flu shot and 59.6% received Tdap. Maternal Tdap passes protective antibodies to the baby before birth and lowers the risk of whooping cough in infants under two months old by 78%, according to the CDC. The gap between recommendation and action is a structural flaw in benefits design, and it carries real financial and human costs.
Why Good Intentions Aren't Enough
Benefits teams post wellness flyers in breakrooms and run annual enrollment webinars, yet pregnant employees still report confusion. They are caught between advice from their OB, their primary doctor, their insurer's website, and generic HR communications. The system produces three specific failures:
- The Information Failure: Guidance is broadcast, not personalized. A pregnant employee must piece together facts from a dozen sources.
- The Incentive Failure: Most models reward treatment, not prevention. The system pays for a NICU stay but offers no tangible reward for the vaccine that could have helped prevent it.
- The Intelligence Failure: Benefits leaders lack a clear view of preventive care rates in this population because data sits siloed across pharmacy, medical claims, and HR. ROI becomes impossible to measure.
The result is lower vaccination rates, higher avoidable claims, and employees who feel the system is not built for them when they need it most.
A Blueprint for a Smarter System
Fixing this requires moving past communication and into reconstruction: a Health-to-Wealth™ connection that makes the right choice easy and rewarding. That approach rests on three pillars.
1. Contextual Communication
Instead of another company-wide email, a secure platform delivers stage-specific guidance. With consent, it recognizes an employee's pregnancy and sends a timely, actionable message: “You're entering your 28th week. Time for your Tdap vaccine to protect your newborn. Here's how to schedule it at your clinic.” That message replaces a dozen competing sources.
2. Aligned, Instant Incentives
When that employee gets her vaccine, the system does more than file a claim. It triggers two immediate wealth-building actions:
- Real, spendable reward dollars appear in the employee's account, ready to use at the WellthCare Store™ on health-supporting products.
- Employer-committed savings fund an automatic contribution to her retirement account.
Prevention now has tangible forward value. The health decision links directly to financial well-being. WellthCare™, the first Health-to-Wealth™ Benefit System, delivers this connection with no new employer out-of-pocket cost, drawing on employee pre-tax elections and tax efficiencies rather than new employer spending.
3. Actionable Intelligence for Leadership
For the benefits strategist, this closed-loop system provides clarity. A dashboard shows real participation rates, projected cost avoidance from prevented complications, and clear metrics on program engagement. Maternal health support moves from a soft benefit into a strategic investment with measurable outcomes.
Pregnancy Vaccines Beyond Flu and Tdap
The blind spot is wider than two shots. The CDC recommends a maternal RSV vaccine (Pfizer's Abrysvo) during weeks 32 through 36 of pregnancy, between September and January in most of the U.S., to protect newborns from severe RSV disease. COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy is also supported by the CDC, which notes that pregnancy raises the risk of severe illness and that most babies hospitalized with COVID-19 were born to mothers who were not vaccinated during pregnancy. A platform that delivers stage-specific guidance can place all of these doses on one timeline, and the same incentive logic applies to each. As the pregnancy vaccine list grows, the value of a system that tells an employee which shot she needs, when, and why only compounds.
Seeing the Whole Employee
Closing the pregnancy blind spot is more than a niche maternal health program. It is a proof of concept for an intelligent, humane, and financially sound benefits model, one that connects health actions to wealth outcomes and improves lives while stewarding company resources more effectively. The alternative keeps the recommendation on a poster while the plan absorbs the cost of preventable complications.
This article is for general information only and is not legal, tax, or medical advice. Employers should consult their own advisors.