Op-Ed: Black maternal health crisis: It’s time now for action (part 1) – The Philadelphia Sunday Sun

By A. Bruce Crawley In recent years, we have witnessed the election of a first Black U.S. president, a first Black female U.S. vice president, and seen historically high levels of Black higher education degree holders. In the midst of these signs of Black progress, it’s difficult to imagine a more insidious and “throwback-racist” issue than that which is facing birthing Black women and other women of color, in what has been the nation’s ongoing challenge to reduce the country’s deadly maternal health disparities. It’s justifiably called “deadly,” because the complex factors at the root of it all have combined to produce disproportionately high rates of deaths and morbidities for birthing women of color and for their infants in the U.S., with special impact on those who have been low-income and Medicaid-insured. Why is Medicaid coverage an issue in this matter? Medicaid is, of course, the state- and federal-funded public health insurance plan, which has been designed to serve low-income Americans, who can’t afford private insurance coverage. In a country wherein people of color have been largely excluded from mainstream economic access, none should be surprised to learn that 65.3% of Native Americans and Alaska natives, 64.8% of Black insured...