US maternal mortality rate far higher than in peer nations, report finds
The US has a far higher rate of #maternal #mortality than other peer wealthy nations,
and an extraordinary #disparity between white and Black Americans, according to a new brief released by the Commonwealth Fund.
The American outlier status persisted even as the maternal mortality rate has improved in the post-pandemic era, both in the US and globally.
“We could always be happy for going in the right direction, that’s for sure,” said Munira Z Gunja, senior researcher at the Commonwealth Fund’s international program in health policy and practice innovations. “But we still have a ways to go.”
The Commonwealth Fund report compares the US with 12 wealthy nations using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, better known as the OECD, a group of developed democracies.
Although OECD data is considered the gold standard for international comparison, researchers said there may be differences in how countries gather data.
Researchers found that in 
2022, 22.3 US women per 100,000 died either during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth.
That is a slight improvement from 2021, when American women died at a rate of 32.9 per 100,000.
Still, alarming disparities persist, particularly between white and Black mothers. White mothers in America died at a rate of 19 per 100,000 in 2022. By contrast,
Black mothers died at a rate of 49.5 per 100,000, or roughly 2.5 times the rate of white Americans.
Nearly every demographic group of American mothers dies at a higher rate than all mothers in peer nations.
Norway, for instance, did not document a single maternal death. The United Kingdom, which conducts an in-depth investigation into every death, counted 5.5 maternal deaths per 100,000.
Notably, most of the deaths of American mothers
– more than 80%
– are #preventable, according to CDC data cited by the Commonwealth report.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jun/05/maternal-mortality-rate?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
