Sixty percent of all pregnancy-related deaths can be prevented with better health care, communication and support, the researchers concluded.
“Ensuring quality care for mothers throughout their pregnancies and postpartum should be among our nation’s highest priorities,” said Robert R. Redfield, director of the CDC. “I urge the public health community to increase awareness with all expectant and new mothers about the signs of serious pregnancy complications and the need for preventive care that can and does save lives.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which was not involved in the CDC report, recently acknowledged that racial bias within the health care system is contributing to the disproportionate number of pregnancy-related deaths among minority women.
“We are missing opportunities to identify risk factors prior to pregnancy, and there are often delays in recognizing symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum, particularly for black women,” Lisa Hollier, immediate past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement.
The United States has an abysmal record on maternal health, compared with other high-income countries. Even as maternal death rates fell by more than one-third from 2000 to 2015 across the world, outcomes for U.S. mothers worsened, according to UNICEF.
The CDC examined pregnancy-related deaths in the United States from 2011 to 2015 and also reviewed more detailed data from 2013 to 2017 provided by 13 states’ maternal mortality review committees.
The agency found that black women were 3.3 times more likely than white women to suffer a pregnancy-related death; Native American and Alaska Native women were 2.5 times more likely to die than white women. More than half of these deaths were preventable, regardless of race or ethnicity.
Obstetric emergencies involving complications like severe bleeding caused most of the deaths at delivery. But cardiovascular disease — not typically associated with a young pregnant women — was a leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths.
Heart disease and strokes caused more than one-third of pregnancy-related deaths, the CDC found.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.