Protecting Black Pregnant People’s Health—And Data

In the United States, health care for Black pregnant people is often understood through the lens of crisis. Indeed, Black women are dying from preventable pregnancy-related complications at three to four times the rate of white women. At the same time, the increasing datafication of pregnancy care—intended to minimize implicit biases and increase patient engagement—also creates challenges for birth workers seeking to provide holistic care to marginalized people. Instead of streamlining care, intensive data collection introduces administrative burdens, interoperability failures, and the potential for privacy breaches.   Yet, when we focus our attention on the data that describes Black maternal mortality, we run the risk of obscuring what many birth workers are doing every day to reduce these disparities and deliver tailored care. Broadly speaking, birth workers are using data collection tools that fail to meet privacy standards, struggle to perform vital functions, and put patients and workers at risk of colliding with carceral systems. But that snapshot does not tell the full story. “Establishing Vigilant Care: Data Infrastructures and the Black Birthing Experience,” a report I authored, offers a birth-worker-led analysis of how data collection impacts Black patients. I argue that doulas, midwives, and physicians who center Black patients’ experiences...