Black women face higher maternal mortality rates. Black maternal health week highlights disparities, emphasizing the diversity of providers, better access and listening to patients.
According to the centers for Disease Control, black women are three times more likely to die of a problem related to pregnancy compared to white women.
Black maternal health week, from April 11 to 17, is the time to highlight the problem and focus on solutions aimed at reducing disparities in maternal health care.
Health care providers approaching black maternal health indicate that part of the improvement in results for black women can be simple as listening.
Dr. Bethany Fosu, a doctor from DC Health Community Health Administration, says it is important that patients feel that they can connect with their health care provider.
“And having the impression of being heard and feels like, whatever the culture of which it comes, it can be a defender of its own health,” said Fosu.
When patients do not feel comfortable with a supplier, they can find navigation on the overwhelming health system, and if they feel that their concerns are rejected, they may not be sure that “they can trust them with the information given to them,” added Fosu.
Dr. Tarnisha Hemphill, a certified nursing midwife and assistant professor at George Washington University in the midwife program, says that having diversified staff where patients are considered is useful for establishing care.
Hemphill said that having accessible medical facilities is also important.
“There are areas that are a maternity desert. There are certain areas that have no access to maternity and one of these areas was in DC-Ward 7, Ward 8, “she said, referring to the districts east of the Anacostia river.
“This is why it is really monumental that we now have an opening of Cedar Hill (regional hospital), in this way, it can help access that many patients in this area are lacking.”
Last Wednesday was the Large opening of Cedar Hill HospitalWho replaces United Medical Center and provides the first work and delivery facilities east of the river in almost a decade.
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