Highland hospital oakland covid11/8/2023 Tennis superstar Serena Williams’ harrowing 2018 account of her own near-death postpartum experience with a blood clot in her lungs and a cascade of life-threatening complications was a sobering reminder that even wealth and fame are no protection from being dismissed or mistreated during one of the most vulnerable moments of a woman’s life.Īt least three Black women have died in childbirth since March in New York City, which was hit hard early on by the coronavirus. ![]() (Florida Memory)Īfrican American infants are more than twice as likely to die as white infants, and the risks extend across social class. Black midwives in the South continued delivering babies for disadvantaged women in rural communities until well into the 1970s, despite a campaign by modern gynecologists to portray them as superstitious and unfit. ![]() She provides pre- and postnatal care regardless of where women plan to deliver, though the majority of her clientele choose home births.Ī Florida midwife holds twins in this undated photo. Jordan’s practice is now 98% Black, “something I’ve never seen before,” she said. Many Americans think of giving birth at home as backward and scary, or as a quixotic practice of privileged white women, akin to cloth diaper services and home-cooked baby food.īut the growing interest in home births in recent years has fueled a growing Black midwifery movement that harks back to a venerable, if long-forgotten, tradition in the United States. “Every midwife I’m talking to has seen their practice double or sometimes triple in the wake of COVID,” said Jamarah Amani, a Florida midwife and co-founder of the National Black Midwives Alliance. Birth centers and midwives who attend home births say they’ve been swamped by new clients since the pandemic. Images of hospitals inundated with coronavirus patients have sparked a flurry of new interest among women of all races in home births, which account for just over 1% of deliveries in the United States. ![]() Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, she said, the practice’s clientele has more than tripled. “It feels like we are needed,” said midwife Kiki Jordan, who co-owns Birthland, a prenatal practice that opened early this year in a 400-square-foot storefront in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood targeting low-income women of color. Researchers argue that the roots of this disparity - one of the widest in women’s health care - lie in long-standing social inequities, from lack of safe housing and healthy food to inferior care provided at the hospitals where Black women tend to give birth. Total number of ED visits who were seen on the previous calendar day who had a visit related to COVID-19 (meets suspected or confirmed definition or presents for COVID diagnostic testing – do not count patients who present for pre-procedure screening).Subscribe to California Healthline's free Weekly Edition newsletter.Īs the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare health care inequities, more Black women are looking to home birth as a way not only to avoid the coronavirus but also to shun a health system that has contributed to African American women being three to four times more likely to die of childbirth-related causes than white women, regardless of income or education.
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