ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC)— The maternal mortality crisis in the U.S. is getting worse. Federal data shows a sharp increase in women dying during childbirth and due to maternal health-related issues, and rates are far more dire for Black mothers.
The National Vital Statistics System report, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows data from 2021, which gives a bit of a better look at the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic years.
In 2021, 1,205 women died of maternal causes in the U.S. In 2020, it was 861 mothers’ lost, and in 2019, 754 individuals died. That’s just across the board. For Black mothers in the United States, there is a much greater risk of death. Sen. Samra Brouk weighs in.
“In the U.S. level, Black women specifically are 3-4 times more likely to die in childbirth. In New York State it’s 5 times. In New York City it’s 9 times more likely to die in childbirth and I think we have to remember not only are these rates compounded by race, but also the united states itself,” Sen. Brouk says.
Enter Dr. Tracey Webber. She runs the midwifery program at the University of Rochester Medical Center and is also one of the OBGYN’s Diversity Officers. She explains how clearly documented historical practices rooted in racism are still impacting individuals today.
“Throughout history Black women have been seen as ‘less-than’, meaning we tolerate pain more than White women do, or we’re seeking drugs, and that type of things, so our pain management is not addressed in the same way,” she says.
“If you look way back in history there was a physician named J.Marion Sims who was a practicing physician — not an OBGYN — but he began treating enslaved Black women and realized that if he mastered certain procedures to address what we call fistulas, which are injuries to the birth canal, that he could then make money by charging White women for these procedures, but he had to perfect it and perfect his skills first,” Dr. Webber says, noting, of course, the women these surgeries were performed on gave no consent, nor anesthesia.
The mentality and historical notion of Black women being able to tolerate pain more than others is something she says has still carried over to modern medicine.
“I think throughout medicine and looking at medical education and even nursing education — those of us who are advanced practitioners— I feel like that we’ve been trained with these paradigms where there’s a lack of understanding of the racist history that exists within medicine.”
It’s something she lectures about and helps to address when it comes to training. The midwifery program just completed a Diversity and Equity program, educating staff on often hard-to-discuss topics, such as microaggressions and unconscious bias, such as Black mothers being asked more questions when it comes to drug screenings, for example.
“Are you going to ask those same questions of your White patients that you’re going to ask of your Black and Latina patients? Or about— is this the same father? Like why is the assumption that that patient may be pregnant by another person? So there’s just certain things that we can do better,” Dr. Webber says.
The report can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2021/maternal-mortality-rates-2021.pdf