Cedars-Sinai efforts aim to reduce disparities in Black maternal health

Key takeaways:

• Barriers to improved Black maternal health outcomes stem from structural racism and implicit biases.
• Cedars-Sinai has numerous initiatives in the works to reduce racial/ethnic maternal health disparities.

Risk for maternal mortality for Black women in the U.S. is double that of white women. Barriers to improving maternal health outcomes for Black women stem from years of structural racism and bias, according to Kimberly Gregory, MD, MPH.

Gregory is director of maternal-fetal medicine and vice chair of women’s health care quality and performance improvement in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Cedars-Sinai.

Kimberly Gregory

“Some of the obvious barriers are access either by way of insurance , lack of insurance, social determinants of life resulting in either difficulty or further distance to appropriate health care facilities or having environments that are conducive to support prevention,” Gregory told Healio. “However, even in ideal circumstances, the impact of intergenerational structural racism and implicit bias contributes to these ongoing disparities.”

In this video, Gregory discusses some of the ways Cedars-Sinai is working to improve Black maternal health, including through the use of doulas and midwives, projects to alleviate preeclampsia disparities, a reproductive psychology program to improve perinatal mood disorder disparities, and increasing awareness and education of pregnancy complications.

For more information:

Kimberly Gregory, MD, MPH, can be reached at kimberly.gregory@cshs.org.