Attallah Innis May 3, 2019

Prof. Groves

The Maternal Mortality Rate Gap between Black women and Other Races

The topic about MMR is heavily discussed but there never seems to be a lot of long term solution for this issue that made the percentage decrease throughout the years. The percentage of women that died because of pregnancy in the United States according to the CDC has increased by 26.6%. Now the black women death rate compared to white women is three times higher according to The National Geographic. Even though over time US technology has improved drastically from the 1900s to now there is still a gap between the care of black women from other races. For almost 100 years this issue has been going on and the gap is still there. I want to bring this issue to light because too many women, specifically black women,  all over the country are dying at an alarming rate due to pregnancy. There are many factors that can contribute to the MMR gap between other races and black women and one of them include the lack of access and the lack of knowledge. This is a very important factor to consider because this can be fixed and it can change thousands of lives a year. Some of the effects have to do with health complication and certain factors that affect black women. Black women are susceptible to certain health complication when they are giving birth and those health complications are very well stated in some articles. They mention certain health complications like “ At-risk women including black women with cardiovascular risk factors may benefit from short-term postpartum follow up” ( Aziz 2019). The author state a complication and a solution but it is not a definite solution because she mentions that it may benefit. The author’s article focuses on the maternal outcomes by race during postpartum readmission and she has a very success time stating a solution for this effect. The efforts to reducing the maternal mortality in this article is successful even though it’s not definite because its something. While other article blame the women for not being engaged in there pregnancy and state that the solution is for the women to be more involved in there pregnancy but that more research is need. The articles states “  Black women are also more likely to be late to prenatal care or be inadequate users of prenatal care. Prenatal care can engage those at risk and potentially influence perinatal outcomes but further research on the link between prenatal care and maternal outcomes is needed” (Gadson 2017). This article stated the causes to be black women not using prenatal care or not using it early enough in the pregnancy, but they fail to mention whether or not black women are given the option or simply know about the option. This article does have a solution even though they fail to mention certain factors.