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Black Maternal and Infant Health: Historical Legacies of Slavery

Deirdre Cooper Owens1, Sharla M Fett1

  • 1Deirdre Cooper Owens is with the Department of History and the Humanities in Medicine Program, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Sharla M. Fett is with the History Department, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA.

American Journal of Public Health
|August 16, 2019
PubMed

The legacies of slavery today are seen in structural racism that has resulted in disproportionate maternal and infant death among African Americans.The deep roots of these patterns of disparity in maternal and infant health lie with the commodification of enslaved Black women's childbearing and physicians' investment in serving the interests of slaveowners. Even certain medical specializations, such as obstetrics and gynecology, owe a debt to enslaved women who became experimental subjects in the development of the field.Public health initiatives must acknowledge these historical legacies by addressing institutionalized racism and implicit bias in medicine while promoting programs that remedy socially embedded health disparities.

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