Chuck Darwin<p>US maternal mortality rate far higher than in peer nations, report finds </p><p>The US has a far higher rate of <a href="https://c.im/tags/maternal" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>maternal</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/mortality" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mortality</span></a> than other peer wealthy nations,<br>and an extraordinary <a href="https://c.im/tags/disparity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>disparity</span></a> between white and Black Americans, according to a new brief released by the Commonwealth Fund.<br>The American outlier status persisted even as the maternal mortality rate has improved in the post-pandemic era, both in the US and globally.<br>“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.”<br>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. <br>Although OECD data is considered the gold standard for international comparison, researchers said there may be differences in how countries gather data.<br>Researchers found that in 💥2022, 22.3 US women per 100,000 died either during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth. 💥<br>That is a slight improvement from 2021, when American women died at a rate of 32.9 per 100,000.<br>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, <br>💥Black mothers died at a rate of 49.5 per 100,000, or roughly 2.5 times the rate of white Americans.💥<br>🔥Nearly every demographic group of American mothers dies at a higher rate than all mothers in peer nations. <br>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.<br>Notably, most of the deaths of American mothers <br>– more than 80% <br>– are <a href="https://c.im/tags/preventable" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>preventable</span></a>, according to CDC data cited by the Commonwealth report.</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jun/05/maternal-mortality-rate?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theguardian.com/global-develop</span><span class="invisible">ment/article/2024/jun/05/maternal-mortality-rate?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other</span></a></p>