Objective  To analyze the authority of maternal health need information published by governmental and professional institutions and the relationship between the authority with maternal mortality in Beijing and Shanghai and to explore the feasibility for quantitative assessment on the authority of the information.

  Methods  We collected all information on sensitive indicators of health needs among women in Beijing and Shanghai published by research, healthcare and governmental institutions between 2000 and 2017 by searching through all types of media. Descriptive methods were used to analyze and compare variations of the sensitive indicators in the two cities. Spearman correlation and univariate regression analysis were used to assess the relationship between authoritative degree of the information and maternal mortality.

  Results  The maternal health need information published by all the institutions of the three categories in Shanghai were better than those in Beijing, with the increased proportion covering all the sensitive indicators from 30.0% in 2000 to 40.0% in 2017 for the released information of Shanghai and the increased proportion from 0% in 2000 to 30.0% in 2017 for the information of Beijing; the coverage proportions of all the sensitive indicators of childbearing period care remained at 40.0% for the information published by all the three-category institutions in Shanghai, but the highest proportion was only 20.0% in Beijing; while the coverage proportion of all the sensitive indicators of maternal health care was 25.0% in 2000 for the published information of Shanghai and the proportion was 50.0% in 2017 for both the published information of Shanghai and Beijing. The authority degree of the published information on recognized maternal health need increased from 40.5% in 2000 to 63.1% in 2017 in Beijing and from 59.9% to 69.9% in Shanghai. There was an inverse correlation between the authority degree of the published information on recognized maternal health need and maternal mortality in both the cities, with a higher correlation coefficient of – 0.710 observed in Shanghai than that of – 0.484 in Beijing. We also observed a negative impact of the authority degree of published information for identified maternal health needs on maternal mortality in the Beijing and Shanghai, with the interpretation percentages of 37.2% and 47.1% for the equations established.

  Conclusion  Appropriate maternity insurance system should promote health need identification by major government departments. The positive effect of authority degree of published information for maternal health need identification on health outcomes was slightly higher in Shanghai than in Beijing. Efforts should be made by professional institutions in investigation and publication of maternal health information.