How bad is maternal mortality in the U.S.? A new study says it's been overestimated
The peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology says a pregnancy checkbox on national death certificates inflates the death rate.
The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics' most recent report put the U.S. maternal mortality rate at a whopping 32.9 deaths per 100,000 births. That number garnered a great deal of attention, including being covered by NPR and other news outlets.
A new study suggests the national U.S. maternal mortality rate is actually much lower than that: 10.4 deaths per 100,000 births.
The widely reported issue of racial disparities in U.S. maternal mortality persists, even with the lower overall rate. Black pregnant patients are still three times more likely to die than white patients, according to data in the study published in the
