In the car this morning, I was listening to 1A, a national show that airs on WESA FM, Pittsburgh’s NPR affiliate, and the topic of conversation was the increase in pregnancy-related deaths since the pandemic began. In particular, IA Host Jenn White was zeroing in on the fact that black mothers were dying at three times the rate than white women were, and why that was so. Indeed, according to a new CDC report, fully one-third of the pregnant women and new mothers who died in 2020 were Black, though Black Americans make up just over 13 percent of the population. 

While the COVID pandemic seems to have exacerbated the problem, this is not a new story. Maternal health outcomes in black women has always been worse than outcomes in white women, largely because of their lack of access to good obstetrical care during pregnancy. And such outcomes are not just the result of poverty; educated black mothers apparently fare worse than educated white mothers no matter what their level of income is, according to the medical professionals speaking on 1A. The root cause of this disparity, they believe, is systematic racism.

This conclusion did not shock or surprise me. I have long known that racial bias explains many discrepancies in the health outcomes of Black Americans when compared to White Americans. But I found the frankness with which the guests on 1A were discussing the role that racism plays in our health care system gratifying because such openness wasn’t always the case. The 1A conversation reminded me of the time, 22 years ago, when I tried to interest my editors at The Boston Globe, in a newly published study that found Black Americans had poorer mental health outcomes than white Americans, largely because they don’t have adequate access to good mental health care. I was a reporter on the metro desk at the time and I remember that the City Editor asked another reporter to look at the study. He decided the results weren’t conclusive enough — on what basis I can’t recall — and I was told not to pursue the story. I felt humiliated — after all, I had been a medical and science reporter at The Globe for 13 years by then — but as I relate in my memoir, Brassy Broad: How one journalist helped pave the way to #MeToo, I had just been demoted for defying another editor, and I had a sneaky suspicion the new City Editor was trying to put me in my place.

I think there was another factor at work as well. Up until recently, most U.S. news outlets were just not prepared to talk about the systematic racism in our society, so when I proposed the story about how attitudes in the health care system affect mental health outcomes in minorities, the editors came up with a handy excuse to discard the idea. Thankfully, times have changed, as the conversation on 1A today showed. Such candor is long overdue!

This blog is also posted on medium.com.