MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-08-22 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Black Lives really DO matter... Minories and
|
wsj.com
Black Mothers in New York Are More Likely to Have Life-Threatening
Complications in Childbirth
Melanie Grayce West
5-7 minutes
Last September, Shamony Makeba Gibson was discharged after the birth of
her second child and was in pain. It wasn’t just the caesarean section.
She didn’t feel right, wasn’t managing daily activities, and in the
evenings felt hot and had difficulty breathing.
“It spiraled from there,” said her mother, Shawnee Benton-Gibson.
Ms. Gibson, a Black mother who gave birth in a Brooklyn hospital, died
of a pulmonary embolism on Oct. 6, 2019, less than two weeks after
giving birth to her son Khari. She was 30 years old.
Pulmonary embolism is one of the most common causes for
pregnancy-related deaths. Ms. Benton-Gibson says her daughter was
healthy, exercising during pregnancy, educated about birth and
disparities, and had a midwife and a doula.
“Some women, just by virtue of being in the skin that they’re in and how
they are treated,” said Ms. Benton-Gibson, “die because of negligence or
because of not being asked the proper questions or listened to.”
According to a new report to be released this week from the private New
York State Health Foundation, Black mothers in New York state were 2.3
times more likely than white mothers to experience potentially
life-threatening complications during or after childbirth.
These complications—known as severe maternal morbidity—can include heart
failure, sepsis, shock, the need for ventilation, a hysterectomy or
blood transfusion, and more than a dozen other serious medical issues,
many of which can lead to death.
Compared with white mothers, the severe maternal morbidity rate among
Hispanic mothers was 1.7 times higher, and it was 1.5 times higher among
Asian mothers, researchers found. The severe maternal morbidity was 2.7%
throughout New York state, according to the report.
Researchers noted that such racial and ethnic disparities have persisted
since the study began in 2011. Disparate outcomes were seen in patients
with private and Medicaid insurance plans, across all regions of New
York state, and among women who had vaginal and caesarean deliveries.
Historically, New York state has had higher rates of severe maternal
morbidity than the national average and in recent years, nationwide data
show New York has ranked in the top quartile.
“We see these patterns on virtually every measure of health, whether
it’s insurance coverage, or access to health care, or quality of care,
or outcomes, or rates of underlying chronic diseases,” said David
Sandman, the president and chief executive of the New York State Health
Foundation. “These patterns where people of color fare worse are so
profound and entrenched, it’s not just a maternity issue.”
New York City public advocate Jumaane D. Williams, who last week held a
rally for the family of Sha-Asia Washington, a Black mother who died in
July while giving birth to her daughter at a Brooklyn hospital, called
it a “failure of government, of those with the power to make changes,”
that every year thousands of Black and Latino women’s lives are lost or
permanently scarred “because of the structural racism and biases in our
health-care system.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in 2019 that
approximately three in five pregnancy-related deaths were preventable.
In April 2018, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo initiated a task force on
maternal mortality and racial disparities. A few months later, the
administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio rolled out its own
five-year plan to eliminate disparities in maternal mortality between
Black and white women. Millions were invested in both plans.
Lynn Roberts, an associate dean at the City University of New York
School of Public Health, has been involved in the city’s and state’s
efforts. The data around complications and deaths for pregnant and
postpartum women of color has been consistent for some time, said Dr.
Roberts, but the data only indicates what goes wrong, not what happened
in the care of the woman.
In recent years, there have been clinical and medical interventions
introduced, and new protocols to identify and treat complications, said
Dr. Roberts. But the data, she said, “seems to boil down to what many of
us have said: ‘It must have to do with racism, and not simply the race
of the women.’”
Chanel Porchia-Albert, founder of Ancient Song Doula Services, and
another expert involved in the city’s and state’s initiatives, said
there haven’t been dramatic shifts in care in response to the plans and
advocates are still calling for universal policies on maternity care, an
expansion of midwifery and access to more birthing centers.
A document developed by the city on respectful care during birth—a
tangible effort that was intended to protect and empower women—hasn’t
worked out as intended, said Ms. Porchia-Albert, who participated in its
creation. It is one thing to arm someone with information about their
rights, she said, but that has to be met at an institutional level with
policies and practices that support those rights with knowledgeable
providers.
Ms. Porchia-Albert said patients can now find themselves in “a situation
where, ‘Ok, I know what my rights are, but I can’t do anything about it.’”
Write to Melanie Grayce West at melanie.west-at-wsj.com
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
_______________________________________________
Hangout mailing list
Hangout-at-nylxs.com
http://lists.mrbrklyn.com/mailman/listinfo/hangout
|
|
