Infant and Maternal Health Disparities (Essay Sample)

Infant and Maternal Health Disparities 

Introduction and Background
The United States and other parts of the world have had issues of disparities over the years. Discrimination has been a contentious issue since slavery time. People of color have experienced discrimination in many sectors of life. In the 1950s, segregation of people of color was highly practiced in the United States. The problem has even been more for black women, who have to undergo discrimination for being women and black. Discrimination yields other issues like lack of proper education, poor healthcare, and poverty (Owens & Fett, 2019). If people are denied opportunities to attend school and venture into business and leadership, they languish in poverty. They become powerless in matters of social development. In this regard, the current paper will articulate the issue of maternal and infant health disparities among black women.
The pandemic and the growing racial justice movement have played a key role in highlighting disparities in health care among people of color, especially stark disparities in maternal and infant death among the black community (Taylor, 2020). There is no doubt that there has not been any other difficult time in the history of this century like the current COVID-19 pandemic. Studies have shown that black women are at high risk of poor maternal and infant health issues. Other studies have shown that black women's pregnancy-related mortality is three times higher than white women's (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2021). Other studies have shown that Black and Hispanic women are at increased risk of maternal morbidity, especially preeclampsia. The risk for black women increases with maternal age compared to white women. For instance, the rate for black women between the ages of 30-34 is four times higher than that of white women. Surprisingly, the maternal mortality is also higher five times for black college women than white college women.
Most of the pregnancy-related deaths have been classified as preventable. However, due to disparities among black women, these deaths are reported because of lack of care for chronic conditions like cardiovascular, which happens to be the leader in pregnancy-related deaths. Black women also have higher birth risk factors like low birth weight compared to that of white women. Some of these problems are that these women do not receive pregnancy-related care early, only to go for it when it is too late. Studies have also shown that teen birth rates are higher among black girls than white girls (Louisiana Department of Health, 2019). In most cases, teens do not have adequate information on how they can bring up their children. Therefore, black teens tend to expose their babies to risks that lead to their deaths before they reach the age of five years. Black teens do not have adequate resources to take care of their babies compared to white teens that are well covered by insurance health covers.