Data compiled by the CDC highlights multiple weaknesses in the system of care for new mothers, from obstetricians who are not trained (or paid) to look for signs of mental trouble or addiction, to policies that strip women of health coverage shortly after they give birth.
Halfpoint Images/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Halfpoint Images/Getty Images
Data compiled by the CDC highlights multiple weaknesses in the system of care for new mothers, from obstetricians who are not trained (or paid) to look for signs of mental trouble or addiction, to policies that strip women of health coverage shortly after they give birth.
Halfpoint Images/Getty Images
For several weeks a year, the work of nurse-midwife Karen Sheffield-Abdullah is really detective work. She and a team of other medical investigators with the North Carolina public health department scour the hospital records and coroner reports of new moms who died after giving birth.
These maternal mortality review committees look for clues to what contributed to the deaths — unfilled prescriptions, missed postnatal appointments, signs of trouble that doctors overlooked — to figure out how many of them could have been prevented and how.
The committees are at work in almost 40 states in the U.S. and in the latest and largest compilation of such data, released in September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a staggering 84% of pregnancy-related deaths were deemed preventable.
Even more striking to nurse-detectives like Sheffield-Abdullah, is that 53% of the deaths occurred well after women left the hospital, between seven days and a year after delivery.
“We are so baby focused,” she says. “Once the baby is here, it’s almost like the mother is discarded. Like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. The mom is the wrapper, and the baby is the candy. Once you remove the wrapper, you just discard the wrapper. And what we really need to be thinking about is that fourth trimester, that time after the baby is born.”
Mental health conditions were the leading underlying cause of maternal deaths between 2017 and 2019, with white and Hispanic women most likely to die from suicide or drug overdose, while cardiac problems were the leading cause of death for Black women. Both conditions occur disproportionately later in the postpartum period, according to the CDC report.
<!…….