DFW Hospital Council President/CEO Stephen Love posted a blog this week on the American Communities Project website titled “Confronting the Rise of Maternal Mortality.” With the number of pregnancy-related deaths increasing since 2020, Love’s blog details the dramatic racial disparities in Texas related to Black women.

“Black women in Texas are ‘disproportionately’ impacted as they account for 11% of live births but 31% of maternal deaths,” Love wrote in his blog. “Texas has the highest number of uninsured residents in the U.S. and the highest percentage of uninsured women of childbearing age. Black women have higher rates of preterm birth, low birthweight, and increased infant mortality.”

According to Love’s post, a Texas maternal mortality and morbidity review committee in 2013 found approximately one-third of pregnancy related deaths in Texas occurred 43 days to a year after the end of pregnancy. The committee also discovered that a very high percent of these deaths could have been prevented.

You can read the full blog here.

The American Communities Project is a combined social science and journalism effort based at The George Washington University’s School of Media & Public Affairs, that uses a vast array of data including election results and economic numbers to break communities into different types of analysis. Results provide a better way of understanding the different types of American communities to develop improved ways of recognizing what works in both rural and urban regions.