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A Literature Review of Black Infant and Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States

Introduction & Background
Black infant mortality rate is 122% higher than that of non-Hispanic white infants. In a 2021 CDC study, Black women’s maternal mortality rate was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.6 times the rate for non-Hispanic White women.
Purpose Statement & Research Question
The purpose of our research was to explore reasons why Black maternal mortality is higher than White and non-Hispanic populations and what contributing health disparities are causing higher mortality rates in black infants and mothers compared to their non-Hispanic white counterparts, in the United States.
Literature Review: We found articles under 5 years old from Cinhal database.
Findings
Examples of inclusion and exclusion criteria in our studies included: ages between 18-39, whether they had hypertension during pregnancy, or were between 22-43 weeks of gestation. Main findings from our studies include mistrust between health providers and the black pregnant women negatively impacted their adherence to safe sleep practice, and 32% of women in another study reported that they were not able to initiate their first prenatal care visit as early as preferred due to a myriad of barriers.
Conclusions & Nursing Interventions
The take-home message of our studies was that disparities are multifactorial. Some major nursing implications we found are that perinatal nurses should assess the psychological wellbeing in Black women throughout pregnancy and advocate for Black women who report high levels of stress, depressive symptoms, or psychological distress.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:es-conf-1106
Date23 April 2023
CreatorsAhmed, Soreeytti, Calloway, Emma, Duncan, Julie, Mgbemena, Chukwuma, Steadman, Katherine
PublisherDigital Commons @ East Tennessee State University
Source SetsEast Tennessee State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
SourceEpsilon Sigma at-Large Research Conference

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