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Black Pregnancy Dangers, Deaths Seen as a ‘Completely Preventable’ Health Crisis_我的网站

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一 | Radio shock jock host Howard Stern said he is considering a run for president on his SiriusXM show Monday.,The controversial host of “The Howard Stern Show” said that he will have a narrowly focused agenda, wanting to eliminate the Electoral College and expand the Supreme Court by appointing five new justices.,“The problem with most presidents is they have too big of an agenda,” Stern explained. “The only agenda I would have is to make the country fair again.”,Stern also took aim at the three Supreme Court Justices appointed by former President Trump. “It’s very hard to have a Supreme Court that’s openly lied,” he said. His solution, as many others have proposed, is to expand the court. “I’m not afraid to do it. As soon as I become president, you’re gonna get five new Supreme Court justices that are going to overturn all this bulls***”,Trump to Run for Presidency in 2024 Presidential Election, Ex-Secretary Spicer Says7 August 2021, 12:01 GMT,Laying out the other major piece of his hyper-focused agenda, Stern said he would fix the voting system.,“I am going to do the very simple thing that’ll set the country straight: one vote, one person. No more Electoral College.” Stern also rhetorically asked, “How long can we keep electing people who lost the election?” referring to Trump’s victory in 2016 in which he lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.,The radio host, who also starred in the 1997 biographical comedy “Private Parts,” said he was only interested in running against Trump, not other Republican candidates. “I know I’ll beat his ass,” Stern said of Trump.,This is not the first time that Stern has hinted that he may jump into the 2024 Presidential race to face Trump. In November 2021, Stern laid out his plan: “I would just sit there at the debate and play that f****** clip of him trying to fix the election over and over again. There is no way I’d lose,” Stern said, referring to the infamous phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that call, Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn the 2020 election.,Stern’s co-host Robin Quivers agreed at the time, saying, “If Trump decides to run again, you have to run against him. That’s my plan, that’s what is going to happen. We can’t leave it to the Democrats.”,Report: Biden Will Run for President in 2024 if Trump Does (And Vice Versa)5 May, 18:50 GMT,It is not clear from the discussion how Stern plans to get on the ballot. He could run for the Democratic nomination if Biden, who has repeatedly said he will run in 2024, decides against running for reelection. Alternatively, he could attempt to primary Biden, though primarying a sitting president is rare and difficult. The last significant attempt was in 1992 when Pat Buchanan tried to primary George H. W. Bush, though he failed to secure even a single state.,Stern could also go the third party or independent route and take on both Biden and Trump at the same time. In 1994, he was nominated by the Libertarian Party in the New York gubernatorial election but dropped out after the state Supreme Court ruled that he would need to reveal his finances.,Stern and Trump were once friendly, with the then-real estate mogul appearing on “The Howard Stern Show” multiple times. That changed after the 2016 election, as their political views grew further apart after Stern said Trump changed politically. Stern said at the time that he was a big supporter of Hillary Clinton and abortion rights.,There’s no word yet on whether President Stern would host a daily call-in show from the West Wing.。

HOUSTON — Tonjanic Hill was overjoyed in 2017 when she learned she was 14 weeks pregnant. Despite a history of uterine fibroids, she never lost faith that she would someday have a child.

But, just five weeks after confirming her pregnancy, and the day after a gender-reveal party where she announced she was having a girl, she seemed unable to stop urinating. She didn’t realize her amniotic fluid was leaking. Then came the excruciating pain.

“I ended up going to the emergency room,” said Hill, now 35. “That’s where I had the most traumatic, horrible experience ever.”

An ultrasound showed she had lost 90% of her amniotic fluid. Yet, over the angry protestations of her nurse, Hill said, the attending doctor insisted Hill be discharged and see her own OB-GYN the next day. The doctor brushed off her concerns, she said. The next morning, her OB-GYN’s office rushed her back to the hospital. But she lost her baby, Tabitha Winnie Denkins.

“This is a public health crisis as it relates to Black moms and babies that is completely preventable,” said Barbie Robinson, who took over as executive director of Harris County Public Health in March 2021. “When you look at the breakdown demographically — who’s disproportionately impacted by the lack of access — we have a situation where we can expect these horrible outcomes.”

In fact, Harris County ranks third, behind only Chicago’s Cook County and Detroit’s Wayne County, in what are known as excess Black infant deaths, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. Those three counties, which also are among the nation’s most populated counties, account for 7% of all Black births in the country and 9% of excess Black infant deaths, said Ashley Hirai, a senior scientist at HRSA. That means the counties have the largest number of Black births but also more deaths that would not occur if Black babies had the same chance of reaching their 1st birthdays as white infants.

No known genetic reasons exist for Black infants to die at higher rates than white infants. Such deaths are often called “deaths of disparity” because they are likely attributable to systemic racial disparities. Regardless of economic status or educational attainment, the stress from experiencing persistent systemic racism leads to adverse health consequences for Black women and their babies, according to a study published in the journal Women’s Health Issues.

These miscarriages and deaths can occur even in communities that otherwise appear to have vast health resources. In Harris County, for example, home to two public hospitals and the Texas Medical Center — the largest medical complex in the world, with more than 54 medical-related institutions and 21 hospitals — mortality rates were 11.1 per 1,000 births for Black infants from 2014 through 2019, according to the March of Dimes, compared with 4.7 for white infants.

The abundance of providers in Harris County hasn’t reassured pregnant Black patients that they can find care that is timely, appropriate or culturally competent — care that acknowledges a person’s heritage, beliefs and values during treatment.

Regardless of income or insurance status, studies show, medical providers often dismiss Black women’s questions and concerns, minimize their physical complaints and fail to offer appropriate care. By contrast, a study of 1.8 million hospital births spanning 23 years in Florida found that the gap in mortality rates between Black and white newborns was halved for Black babies when Black physicians cared for them.

In 2013, Houstonian Kay Matthews was running a successful catering business when she lost the daughter she’d named Troya eight months and three weeks into pregnancy.

Matthews hadn’t felt well — she’d been sluggish and tired — for several days, but her doctor told her not to worry. Not long afterward, she woke up realizing something was terribly wrong. She passed out after calling 911. When she woke up, she was in the emergency room.

None of the medical staffers would talk to her, she said. She had no idea what was happening, no one was answering her questions, and she started having a panic attack.

“It kind of felt like I was watching myself lose everything,” she recalled. She said the nurse seemed annoyed with her questions and demeanor and gave her a sedative. “When I woke up, I did not have a baby.”

Matthews recalled one staffer insinuating that she and her partner couldn’t afford to pay the bill, even though she was a financially stable business owner, and he had a well-paying job as a truck driver.

She said hospital staffers showed minimal compassion after she lost Troya. They seemed to dismiss her grief, she said. It was the first time she could remember feeling as if she was treated callously because she is Black.

“There was no respect at all, like zero respect or compassion,” said Matthews, who has since founded the Shades of Blue Project, a Houston nonprofit focused on improving maternal mental health, primarily for Black patients.

To help combat these high mortality rates in Harris County, Robinson created a maternal child and health office and launched a home-visit pilot program to connect prenatal and postpartum patients with resources such as housing assistance, medical care and social services. Limited access to healthy food and recreational activities are barriers to healthy pregnancy outcomes. Studies have also shown a connection between evictions and infant mortality.

For Hill, not having insurance was also likely a factor. While pregnant, Hill said, she had had just a single visit at a community health center before her miscarriage. She was working multiple jobs as a college student and did not have employer-provided medical coverage. She was not yet approved for Medicaid, the state-federal program for people with low incomes or disabilities.

Texas has the nation’s highest uninsured rate, with nearly 5 million Texans — or 20% of those younger than 65 — lacking coverage, said Anne Dunkelberg, a senior fellow with Every Texan, a nonprofit research and advocacy institute focused on equity in public policy. While non-Hispanic Black Texans have a slightly better rate — 17% — than that overall state level, it’s still higher than the 12% rate for non-Hispanic white Texans, according to census data. Health experts fear that many more people are losing insurance coverage as COVID-19 pandemic protections end for Medicaid.

Without full coverage, those who are pregnant may avoid seeking care, meaning they skip being seen in the critical first trimester, said Fatimah Lalani, medical director at Houston’s Hope Clinic.

Texas had the lowest percentage of mothers receiving early prenatal care in the nation in 2020, according to the state’s 2021 Healthy Texas Mothers and Babies Databook, and non-Hispanic Black moms and babies were less likely to receive first-trimester care than other racial and ethnic groups. Babies born without prenatal care were three times as likely to have a low birth weight and five times as likely to die as those whose mothers had care.

Hill’s twins, though premature, are now preschoolers. “I believe God — and the high-risk doctor — saved my twins,” she says.(Brandon Thibodeaux/KFF Health News)

If Hill’s miscarriage reflects how the system failed her, the birth of her twins two years later demonstrates how appropriate support has the potential to change outcomes.

With Medicaid coverage from the beginning of her second pregnancy, Hill saw a high-risk pregnancy specialist. Diagnosed early with what’s called an incompetent cervix, Hill was consistently seen, monitored and treated. She also was put on bed rest for her entire pregnancy.

She had an emergency cesarean section at 34 weeks, and both babies spent two weeks in neonatal intensive care. Today, her premature twins are 3 years old.

“I believe God — and the high-risk doctor — saved my twins,” she said.

This article was produced by KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF. It has been published with permission.

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