![]() Veronica Gillispie-Bell, an ob/gyn at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. ![]() “We have a duty as a society to acknowledge that it is OK to not be OK and destigmatize mental health so that individuals feel comfortable to seek help,” said Dr. So I think that access to care is a really important component.”Įxperts say that addressing substance use during and after pregnancy is also critical as death from opioid overdose among pregnant and postpartum women has increased in recent years, mirroring trends in the general population. “But also comes at a time where, if women have access to health care, there is then a time for more opportunities to help and protect women in terms of screening for intimate partner violence or educating on intimate partner violence. Shutterstock/Shutterstockģ6% of US counties are 'maternity care deserts,' raising risks for women and babies, new report finds Along with access to firearms, it’s one of the highest risk factors for women being murdered during or after pregnancy, she said.Ī new medical terms glossary is part of a broader, ongoing effort to make conception and pregnancy language more humane. Lawn says pregnancy is a time when intimate partner violence often begins or increases in severity. The measures that were put in place to keep people safe from Covid-19, such as stay-at-home orders, actually can exacerbate women’s experiences of intimate partner violence.” “And I think it’s the same with the pandemic. The findings “really just highlight and bring into discussion factors that you don’t traditionally think of with mortality of pregnant women,” said Lawn, who was not involved with the research. Rebecca Lawn, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. The findings can be largely attributed to the stressors brought on by the pandemic, he said. By 2020, it’s kind of flip-flopped where the majority of the deaths are coming from other causes, not pregnancy-specific,” Howard said. I think it was around 60% and 40% were from other causes. “If you go back to 2015, most of the deaths in this population were from pregnancy-specific causes. What Howard finds especially striking is the number of deaths not due to pregnancy. The pregnancy-related mortality rate increased by 4.4% annually from 2015 to 2019 compared with 29% from 2019 to 2020. He says the research is consistent with increasing death rates among pregnant and postpartum women, but says this trend was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Maternal and infant death rates are higher in states that ban or restrict abortion, report says Shot of an unrecognizable pregnant woman sitting on a bed and holding her belly in her bedroom at home PeopleImages/iStockphoto/Getty Images What this points to is that there’s particular vulnerability in this population to some of these other social factors,” said Jeffrey Howard, an author of the study and associate professor of public health at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “One of the main messages, I think, from this is really that there’s a much bigger societal problem facing pregnant women and new mothers who are in that postpartum period where, you know, that’s a very stressful time of life. Black women had similarly high mortality rates across all causes, with 5.3 times higher risk of dying from homicide. ![]() Mortality rates were three to five times higher among American Indian or Alaska Native women for every cause except suicide. The study authors also identified significant racial and ethnic disparities. The mortality rate involving suicide did not significantly change. Accidental drug poisoning was the most common, followed by motor vehicle collisions and homicide, with mortality rates of 12.2%, 5.9% and 5.5%, respectively. Mortality rates increased 22% for pregnancy-related causes and 36% for nonpregnancy causes.Ĭauses not related to pregnancy accounted for more than half of the women’s deaths in 2020, the researchers say. The women’s mortality rate from any cause increased from 54 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 70 in 2020, the researchers found. Photo taken in Belgrade, Serbia Katarina Ivkovic/EyeEm/Getty Imagesĭrug overdose deaths during pregnancy and postpartum rose sharply in recent years, study shows
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