Today marks the first day of Black Maternal Health Week, a week to highlight the specific challenges facing Black women and their reproductive and maternal health.
ISUOG is dedicated to advancing the health of women of all backgrounds and ethnicities, which is reflected in the diversity of research published in the UOG. Many of these articles are now open access on the UOG online library.
The maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women is almost 3.5 times the rate of non-Hispanic White women in the USA. This disproportionate level of poor maternal outcomes for Black women is why it is crucial to continue to conduct inclusive research and address healthcare inequities.
UOG Editor in Chief, Prof. Anthony Odibo says:
“Black mothers continue to have about three to four times the maternal mortality, and serious maternal morbidity rates, compared to their non-Black counterparts. As a leading journal on women’s health, UOG continues to highlight articles addressing these disparities in outcomes and welcomes those exploring how ethnicity and social determinants of health can impact pregnancy outcomes and how they can be prevented.”
In the UOG Journal paper on Maternal ethnicity and socioeconomic deprivation: influence on adverse pregnancy outcomes, researchers highlight that, in pregnancy, complications such as pre-eclampsia and perinatal mortality are more prevalent in women of Black and South Asian ethnicity when compared with White women. Read the paper to find out more on this topic.
An abstract in the UOG, risk of infant mortality in newborns of non-Hispanic Black mothers from the USA according to birthweight, highlights there was a higher infant mortality in SGA newborns of non-Hispanic Black mothers that was not influenced by maternal education or smoking. Read the abstract in full.
You can search through the UOG online library for further articles that explore Black maternal and reproductive health outcomes.
Black Maternal Health Week is an initiative launched by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, find out more about the campaign on their website.