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This Black Maternal Health Week, its time to end the Black Maternal Health Crisis
The CDC recently released its report on maternal health, and the results are grim. According to the CDC, in 2021, there was a 40% increase in maternal death from the previous year. The U.S. rate for 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is more than ten times the estimated rates of some other “high-income” countries. In a separate report, the CDC has determined that 84% of those pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. were preventable.
But not every community fairs the same. Their data shows that Black women are 2.6 times more likely to die during pregnancy through the first few weeks postpartum than White women.
What is to blame for these disparities? A combination of factors. 2021 was the height of the Covid19 pandemic and many pregnant people may have forgone care due to overcrowding of hospitals. The strain on the healthcare industry during the pandemic only exacerbated the already high maternal death in the Black community due to well-documented lack of access to care, quality of care, implicit bias from medical professionals, and institutional racism.
