What's The BioTea?
Stay up to date on news, postings, scholarly articles, and events related to Bioinformatics, Black Maternal Health, Public Health, Epidemiology, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Picking an article to kick off this project was challenging, because it's so much that I want to share with readers. An article focusing on the purpose of this project, closing the gap in maternal healthcare, is the article of choice. It serves as this project's North Star. The World Journal of Gynecology and Women's Health published Black Maternal Mortality-The Elephant in the Room in 2019.
This article by Lister, Drake, Baldwin and Graves provide a clear, digestible summary of a complex problem with numerous root causes.
The authors identified factors contributing to the high rate of Black maternal mortality beyond socioeconomic barriers. Even when socioeconomic status was equal, Black women experienced more pregnancy complications.
The authors pointed to racism from doctors and supporting staff as a contributing factor to the disparity in the Black maternal mortality.
The USA has a mortality rate of 26.4 per 100,000 live births. That is approximately 5x the rate of other developed nations.
White women in the USA have a maternal mortality rate that is roughly 1/3 of that of Black women.
According to the authors, solutions include treating Black women with respect and compassion and addressing overall health by managing comorbidities such as obesity, stroke, chronic hypertension, metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes.
Another recommendation from the authors is improved and immediate postpartum care by primary physicians for women with pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia and preterm birth. They also call for healthcare professionals to bravely confront their own implicit biases.
Even when Black pregnant women presented as "ideal patients"-with strong socioeconomic status, private insurance, early prenatal care, and healthy lifestyles-their maternal mortality rates remained higher than those of white women.
Other contributing factors include the location of hospitals, such as receiving care at high volume hospitals and teaching hospitals.
This Week's Article in 10 Points
Read the Summary➡️Read the full article➡️Read my comments below➡️Share your comments below
Expecting doctors to not be biased without training is a sure way for Black birthing people to continue to die at this pace.
Racism in healthcare has to be reduced in order to save the life of Black birthing people.
There must be a public health campaign that targets Black women who do not feel comfortable visiting doctors offices.
There need to be consequences for doctors and healthcare staff who have multiple reports of racism, including jail time and loss of licenses for doctors with multiple Black maternal deaths.
The USA must collectively be embarrassed to have a third world health care systems for any and every citizen.
There must be a trustworthy reporting system for Black women to report disparate treatment.
Anyone who says some version of "they need to eat better and exercise" has missed the whole point and should be first person signed up for implicit bias training.
There are too many children growing up without their Black mother due to the lack of care from those who chose to have a career as healers.
My thoughts
If your thought is what about white babies, you are racist. Focusing on Black babies does not mean that my care for white babies is non-existing. This is white fragility.
