Black Maternal Mortality: A Crisis in Need of Urgent Redress

While the latest update from the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the national maternal mortality rate for 2023 decreased to 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births, in comparison to a rate of 22.3 in 2022, it noted that the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births and that this was significantly higher than rates for White (14.5), Hispanic (12.4), and Asian (10.7) women. More troubling still, the maternal mortality rate for Black women has risen over the past five years from 2.5 times the rate observed for non-Hispanic White counterparts (in 2018) to nearly 3.5 times the rate. Given that > 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are deemed preventable by state-based maternal mortality review committees, every effort must be made to curtail, if not eliminate the bane of Black maternal mortality. It is the objective of this Commentary to review the recent national efforts to delimit the incidence of Black maternal mortality by the federal government and the future prospects thereof.