12 Months Continuous Care Postpartum Supports Infants & Mothers
January 14, 2021 (Reposted from August, 2020)
By Kelly Vyzral, Senior Health Policy Associate
Every year, women in Ohio die preventable deaths due to complications in pregnancy or in the weeks and months after giving birth. The United States is the only industrialized nation with a maternal mortality rate that is rising – increasing 26% between 2000 and 2014. According to CDC figures, the death rate between 2012 and 2016 for pregnant women in Ohio was 19.2 out of 100,000 births, ranking Ohio 27 out of 47 states that report this data. In Ohio, the Black infant mortality rate in 2015 was 2.6 times the rate for White babies, and Black women in the United States are 3 times as likely to die from pregnancy- related causes as their White counterparts. This, combined with the disproportionate impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on communities of color, underscores our current system is not working for all Ohio mothers and children. In fact, Ohio’s Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review Panel (PAMR) recently published a report showing that over half the deaths of women who were pregnant or who died within one year of pregnancy were preventable from 2008-2016. Download article here.