Obesity, high blood pressure and inadequate prenatal care: Those are just some of the factors contributing to an alarming rise in the death rate among African American women during childbirth.

Nationally, black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy than their white counterparts -- 36.1 per 100,000 live births versus 9.6, according to a 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Maternal mortality rates have been rising in the United States since the mid-1990s. But among black women, the trend has been especially pronounced.

In 1997, the black maternal mortality rate was 21.5 per 100,000 live births. By 2007, the rate had jumped to 28.4, roughly three times the rates among whites and Hispanics at 10.5 and 8.9 respectively.

According to two recent studies, pregnancy-related mortality in some states rivals rates fond in some developing nations. The problem is particularly acute in New York City, where blacks are nearly eight times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than whites, and in California, where pregnant blacks are four times as likely to die from childbirth.

“The magnitude of this black-white gap in maternal mortality is the greatest among all health disparities . . . and that gap is growing. It’s unacceptable,” Michael Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and public health at UCLA and an expert in racial and socio-economic disparities in maternal and infant health, recently told PBS NewsHour.

Read more at America’s Wire, an online news site sponsored by the Maynard Media Center on Structural Racism.

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