Worcester doctors call for action on Black maternal health

WORCESTER, Mass — Black Maternal Health Week helps spotlight racial disparities in pregnancy-related deaths, and Worcester health experts and community activists met Tuesday to turn awareness into action.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.

Dr. Crista Johnson-Agbakwu has spent much of her career focused on improving care for historically marginalized communities, and she brings years of experience to the conversation on Black maternal health.

“We really need to dig deeper in terms of what are not just the structures in the system, but also the cultural attributes of newly arriving populations who may have language and cultural barriers or different understandings about health and disease and wellness,” Johnson-Agbakwu said. “They get lost in the system in terms of gaps in care seeking.”

Johnson-Agbakwu is the inaugural executive director of the Collaborative in Health Equity at the University of Massachusetts T.H. Chan Medical School and UMass Memorial Health.

As Johnson-Agbakwu mentions, people from racial and ethnic minority groups face a number of barriers to care, and she believes breaking those down requires a multi-pronged approach — this includes increasing access to health care coverage throughout the entire duration of a pregnancy up to a year postpartum, paid family leave and teams of nurses and doctors who look like the communities they serve.

“Which means we need to diversify our workforce, which starts not only with how we recruit more Black and brown student learners, residents in training, but also recruiting leaders in these spaces who can be able to be the mentors for future students of color and really provide support throughout their journey and through training,” Johnson-Agbakwu said.

Those in attendance for Worcester’s panel on Black maternal health at City Hall on Tuesday said the city has shown it can make progress on this issue before.

When retired engineer Shannon Henderson helped lead a citywide program focused on infant mortality, its rates in the African American and African communities were cut in half.

“Worcester went to work, but now Worcester has to do more work,” Henderson said. “They’ve got a great community health improvement program. The city needs to get behind it, and the leaders of the city need to get behind that program. If we really want to have one of the healthiest cities in Massachusetts, we’ve got a plan. It’s a good plan, and we just need to get behind it.”

Going forward, those working to lessen pregnancy-related deaths among Black women in Worcester want to focus on getting more real-time data, more funding and the removal of barriers impacting Black and Brown expecting mothers.