Black Maternal Health Awareness Week is wrapping up.

What do we need to know about Black Maternal Health? During pregnancy, childbirth, or the first 42 days after delivery of a living child, Black people are dying at almost three times the rate (CDC, 2021) as white people. More than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable (CDC, 2022) After the initial feelings of disbelief, dismay, and downright heartbreak at such statistics related to the deaths of our fellow community members, we, as public health scientists, and you, our public health savvy readers, have to dig into that part of our brains that asks, “Why?” We have to get curious. Why is this happening? And what can we do? There is no one answer to why this is happening. Many factors play a role: Inequitable (unfair or uneven) access to quality healthcare. We see this in what’s called the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH): the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the conditions in which we are born, grow, work, live, and age, etc. (e.g., how far away is the prenatal care, what is the access to transportation, is there childcare for older children, how/where/to whom is health information being distributed, etc.) Structural racism (the ways in which...