Black Maternal Health Matters: What Black OB-GYNs Want You To Know Before You Give Birth

Getty Images April 11-17 is Black Maternal Health Week. Be informed. Be your best advocate. – Team Lifestyle The Black maternal health crisis in America deserves our immediate attention. Black women in the U.S. are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. And while this shameful statistic has been true for quite some time, we continue to see evidence that little has changed in recent years. Just weeks ago, former Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader ​​Krystal Anderson died from sepsis-related organ failure shortly after delivering her daughter, Charlotte Willow, who was stillborn. Anderson was just 40 years old. Back in 2018, tennis champ Serena Williams famously shared that she developed blood clots after giving birth to her first child via C-section and that her doctors ignored her symptoms until she insisted on having a CT scan. These women’s harrowing stories are startling reminders that Black women are still in the midst of a global maternal health crisis that has not improved. Each year in the United States, Black women are dying during pregnancy or after pregnancy. What’s worse, more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, according to the CDC. Unconscious racial...