Racial Disparities in Infant and Maternal Care in the United States: A History of Exclusion and Mistreatment
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Date
2021
Authors
Urban, Meg
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Black women and their children are subject to disparate maternal and birth outcomes in the United States due to barriers preventing access to quality and equitable prenatal and postnatal maternal and infant care. The history of maternal care in the United States is rooted in the mistreatment, abuse, and exclusion, of Black mothers and Black health care workers from medical progress. This thesis examines the history of public health initiatives addressing high infant and maternal mortality rates, the removal of lay African American midwifery, the history of the Eugenics movement, and the ramifications of these events, and their segregationist frameworks, on the racial disparities that continue to exist in prenatal and postnatal maternal and infant care today for Black mothers and their children. This thesis is a literature review that evaluates the origin of the following persisting barriers to equitable maternal care for Black women: distrust between Black women and their doctors, implicit biases held by doctors, lack of Black representation in the medical field, proximity to quality care, and monetary barriers restricting access to care. In conclusion this thesis evaluates current existing models of holistic care created by Black women for Black women, and additionally includes a reflection on the importance of allyship, specifically what it means to be an ally and to use ones privilege to elevate and listen to the voices of the oppressed in order to advocate and support the reproductive and birth justice frameworks to work towards improving birth and maternal outcomes for Black women and their families.
Description
157 pages
Keywords
Maternal Care Crisis, Maternal Mortality, Racial Disparities, Infant Mortality, Allyship