Black women in the United States have the highest maternal mortality rate of any racial group — and it’s a crisis that should alarm everyone.
Stories of Black women either nearly dying or dying during or following childbirth have made headlines over the years. In 2018, tennis legend Serena Williams revealed that she nearly died after giving birth. She detailed an episode in which a nurse did not immediately act on her concerns that she had a pulmonary embolism — a blockage in the lung artery caused by blood clots. In 2024, Kristy Anderson, a longtime Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader, died after giving birth to a stillborn child. In January, a midwife named Janell Green Smith died after complications from childbirth.
And there are so many more untold stories of Black women dying during or after childbirth across the U.S. The racial disparities in maternal mortality continue to need our attention. Black women are at least three times more likely than white women to die around the time of childbirth, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published in March that cited data from 2024.
It’s important for the public to understand that the Black maternal mortality crisis is an American issue — and that it should matter to everyone, said Dr. Jacqueline C. Hairston, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology (maternal fetal medicine) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician.
Hairston emphasized that “when you are working to improve the outcomes of people who have the worst outcomes, you’re ultimately going to change and improve the outcomes for all.”
“This should matter to everyone because no one should die in childbirth, and we should institute protocols and use our research to protect everyone,” she told HuffPost, stressing that “Black women are disproportionately dying or having poor outcomes.”
“We’re human. Black women are human beings … and [Black women] have the right to birth their child in the United States and not have a higher risk of dying,” said Dr. LaTasha Seliby Perkins, a family medicine physician.
Perkins also made the point that if society accepts the disproportionate maternal mortality rate for Black women, then “who’s to say that these same issues may not pop up in another population?”
“Black women are a large part of the workforce in this country — we are everywhere,” she told HuffPost. “We are taxpayers, and we are workers, and we are educators, and we are doctors, and we are lawyers, and we are teachers, and we are a large part of the workforce.”
“So if one population is affected in this way, when it comes to their mortality, everyone is then affected,” she continued, before emphasizing, again, that the Black maternal mortality crisis should be viewed on a “human level” — and that everyone should advocate for Black expectant mothers to have better health outcomes.
HuffPost spoke with fetal medicine and family medicine doctors to break down what’s contributing to the disparity and the common myths surrounding it. Here’s what to know.
There are major misconceptions about the Black maternal mortality rate, according to doctors.
Research has shown that disparities in maternal mortality rates affect Black women regardless of their socioeconomic status or their background knowledge of maternal health.
Hairston pointed to the example of Smith, the midwife who dedicated much of her work to improving outcomes in Black maternal health before she died after complications from childbirth.
Black women are not protected even when they have a “deeper level of education about maternal health and pregnancy and its complications,” she said.
Perkins also emphasized that despite any misconceptions about who is affected by the Black maternal health crisis, the racial disparities in maternal mortality rates affect all Black women, even those with access to great healthcare.
There are other misconceptions, too. Perkins said that conversations on Black maternal mortality sometimes only center on Black women dying during childbirth — but that it “doesn’t begin and end only at delivery.”
“It’s before delivery, it’s prenatal, then it’s around delivery and also after delivery, what we call the fourth trimester,” she said. “Postpartum is also a time where Black women are still at very high risk.”
The World Health Organization defines a maternal death as a death that occurs during pregnancy, during childbirth or up to 42 days after pregnancy.
“I want to make sure that people understand that Black maternal health doesn’t just start and stop at the delivery,” Perkins said. “But it’s all that is surrounding the maternal health.”
Drs Producoes via Getty Images
“We’re still struggling to incorporate what the effects of racism are in pregnancy outcomes,” said Northwestern Medicine’s Dr. Jacqueline C. Hairston.
Black expectant mothers face discrimination in healthcare systems in various ways.
Research has shown that structural racism and implicit racial biases play crucial roles in the Black maternal mortality crisis. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) recently pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on this very issue during a hearing last month that took place during Black Maternal Health Week.
When Lee asked Kennedy why his agency hadn’t focused on “putting forth serious policies” that address national health crises, such as Black maternal mortality rates, Kennedy claimed that they were “doing more on maternal health than any other administration.”
“No, I said Black maternal health,” Lee responded. But Kennedy tried to keep the focus on maternal health more generally, arguing that it “includes Blacks and whites.”
Lee stressed to Kennedy that there needs to be a focus on why Black expectant mothers are dying at higher rates than any other racial group. “The thing is, is that they’re actually not the same outcomes, which means that we need specific and intentional interventions for Black maternal health,” she said.
Hairston said that doctors often dismiss the symptoms Black expectant mothers are experiencing. She recalled that Williams, a professional athlete who “you would expect to know their body better than any person else,” was nonetheless disregarded when she alerted her medical team about symptoms she was experiencing.
“I think the dismissal of symptoms is one of the biggest things, and I think there are other ways that we can’t quantify racism with research until all of our research really uses race as a proxy for racism,” she said. “We’re still struggling to incorporate what the effects of racism are in pregnancy outcomes.”
“There’s no way to put into a survey how many times your symptoms might’ve been dismissed by a physician or a nurse,” she explained.
Hairston noted that several other factors may contribute to the Black maternal health crisis, including a lack of access to quality pregnancy care, hospital closures, the availability of specialty care and whether an expectant mother has support from their job to make it to prenatal appointments.
She also said it’s important to consider how providers are initiated into medicine. “Who are they learning from? What are they learning?” she questioned, before noting that having a diverse workforce is crucial.
“If we’re not investing in minorities being a part of the workforce… getting them into medical schools so that they can then become trainees and then become the faculty members and professors that are then feeding into the education system… it becomes a vicious cycle of not having enough providers in positions [who] look like the patients or the populations they serve,” she said.
Perkins said that the effects of racism in maternal healthcare date at least as far back as J. Marion Sims, a 19th-century gynecologist whom many called the “father of gynecology.” He performed experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women without anesthesia.
She said it continues to be important to consider what a healthcare provider sees when they encounter Black patients.
“Is it someone vulnerable? Is it someone [who is seen as] strong and she can deal with it, and her complaints aren’t necessarily real?” she questioned.
There are ways healthcare providers can help chip away at the racial disparities in maternal mortality rates.
Perkins said it’s important for providers to, first and foremost, appreciate that any fears Black expectant mothers have surrounding childbirth are valid.
“Keep validating that, that it makes sense for you to be fearful,” she said, noting that Black women are regularly consuming news about their higher rates of dying during childbirth.
She also stressed that it’s important providers listen to and investigate Black women’s concerns.
“If she says it out of her mouth, it is true,” she said. “It’s her lived experience. It’s her truth. Just investigate and listen and treat her as if you would treat any other human … treat her with your highest level of clinical experience.”
“If it’s something that you’re not comfortable with, refer out,” she added.
Hairston said that hospital systems, particularly those caring for Black expectant mothers, should focus on “protocol-izing care as a way to eliminate or reduce bias.”
“And not that that means we’re eliminating the … consideration of the individual, but [it’s instead] to say, this is how we always approach a hemorrhage. This is always how we approach really high blood pressure, regardless of someone’s background, because this number is the number. This amount of blood loss is how we approach it,” she said.
Hairston gave the example of providers who might expect Black women to have higher blood pressure than other women, which may then affect how they treat a Black expectant mother with a higher blood pressure reading.
Protocolized care “takes that out of the conversation,” she said, adding that if a patient’s blood pressure is, for example, “over 160 for the top number … we are treating it. And there’s no question about it.”
Overall, Hairston said, there are so many factors that may contribute to the Black maternal mortality crisis that “there’s no one solution, because they all come together and lead to this outcome.”
“But I think there are ways we can chip away at it,” she said.
