UTSA study finds maternal deaths are rising
Pregnant women and new mothers in the United States died at an increasing rate from 2019 to 2020, according to a new study by public health professors at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
The study found that, compared to white women, Native American women were 3.5 times as likely, and Black women twice as likely, to die either while pregnant or after pregnancy.
The causes of death were not just medical complications, but included homicides, car accidents, suicides and drug poisoning.
Over the past decade, research has suggested a trend of worsening U.S. maternal health. The pandemic added to that trend, and it could get worse as abortion is restricted in some states, like Texas.
“Unfortunately, I do think these trends will continue,” Jeffrey Howard, an associate professor of public health and the lead author of the paper, said Monday in an email. “I would like to hope we can reverse these trends, but I am not seeing the resources and policy efforts being put in place to do that. So, I think they likely will continue.”
A team led by Howard analyzed death certificates from the National Center for Health and Statistics of women across the country age 34 years or younger who were pregnant at the time of death or who died within a year of their pregnancy’s end.
Compared to other racial or ethnic groups, higher rates of Native American women died of car accidents, drug overdoses, homicides or suicide, and higher rates of Black women died as a result of homicides.
But the leading single cause of death for all women was “pregnancy-specific,” which included complications during pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium. The next highest cause of death was poisoning, which is linked to accidental drug overdoses.