After Tori Bowie, an elite athlete, died in May, the reality of the health risk to Black women posed by childbirth was once again in the spotlight. The maternal mortality rate for Black women in America is, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2.6 times that for white women.

Now a recently published study in the medical journal JAMA has revealed that the U.S. maternal mortality rate — already the highest among peer nations — has increased for all racial and ethnic groups. Maternal outcomes in the United States are a public health crisis, and they are only getting worse. We know the data. We need to focus on the solutions.

As a practicing OB-GYN and medical director of Louisiana’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee, I understand not only the problem, but also the solutions. To ease the U.S. maternal health crisis, we must improve systems of […]