The US has alarming pregnancy-related death rates that have increased by 28% in five years, as per a new study from JAMA Open Network. The research highlights significant disparities across racial and ethnic groups and emphasizes that a third of maternal deaths occur after six weeks postpartum. Despite the dangerous trend, the CDC's division of reproductive health was recently eliminated to cut bureaucratic costs. Experts stress the urgent need for increased investment in maternal health services to address rising death rates and persistent inequities.
From 2018 to 2022, the CDC reported 6283 pregnancy-related deaths, including 1,891 late maternal deaths... The study reported that the rate of pregnancy-related deaths in the US rose 27.7%, from 25.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2018, to 32.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022.
Researchers used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) division of reproductive health. Just last week, the Trump administration and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eliminated the division... despite the nation's ranking as the most dangerous high-income country for pregnant people.
It's a hard time for this to come out," Dr. Rose Molina, an OB-GYN at Harvard Medical School, who co-authored the study, told STAT. "We cannot take our eyes off of maternal health right now, and if anything, we need to not just maintain focus, but actually increase investment in maternal health to bring down some of what we're seeing."
The study is one of the first to track maternal health complications both during pregnancy and in the year after, leading to another concerning finding: one-third of pregnancy-related deaths occur more than six weeks after childbirth.
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