Reilly Bealer, MD (University of North Carolina), speaks with PW Editorial Board member Alex McDonald, MD, offering insights to help answer this question, noting that maternal mortality rates more than tripled among Native American and Alaska Native moms while continuing to be highest among Black mothers, according to a study recently published in JAMA. Dr. Bealer, who was a Government Relations and Advocacy Fellow at the AMA in 2020-2021—where she fought for access to Medicaid up to 12 months post-partum—adds that, unfortunately, worsening healthcare for Black and BIPOC mothers—a trend typically relegated to southern states—is expanding. According to the study, New York and New Jersey saw an increase in Black and Latina deaths, while more Asian mothers died in Wyoming and Montana. Dr Bealer gives some great insights into the problems at hand.
Additional reading
Trends in State-Level Maternal Mortality by Racial and Ethnic Group in the United States. Fleszar LG, Bryant AS, Johnson CO, Blacker BF, Aravkin A, Baumann M, Dwyer-Lindgren L, Kelly YO, Maass K, Zheng P, Roth GA. JAMA. 2023 Jul 3;330(1):52-61.
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