Black Infants Die At Alarming Rate In US; Racism Might Play Part

CLEVELAND, OH — Black infants in America die at an alarming rate compared to whites, according to figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and researchers looking into what's behind the gap are honing in on the one experience blacks face in the United States more than anywhere else: racism. Researchers think stress hormones, which are produced when people become stressed, might be linked to pre-term labor, meaning babies being born prematurely.

That struggle couldn't be more real for Cleveland mom Samantha Pierce, who in 2009 became pregnant with twins. NPR reported that Pierce, who is black, thought of herself as a poster child for a good pregnancy. She had previously given birth to healthy boy. She had a college degree. She took prenatal vitamins. She had a "kick-ass" job as a community organizer.

But then, in her second trimester, she had to go the hospital because she was leaking fluid. A week later, her water broke and her twin boys were born — without lungs.

"They lived for about five minutes, each of them," she told the radio station. "But they couldn't breathe. They didn't have lungs. We got to hold them, talk to them."

Pierce, heartbroken, couldn't look at herself in the mirror for months and referred to her womb as "a walking tomb."

Tragically, she isn't alone.

In 2015, 11.73 black infants died out of every 1,000 live births — more than twice that of white infants and hispanic infants, the CDC said in a report last month.

Arthur James, OB-GYN at Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University in Columbus, told NPR most of those black babies who died were born premature because black moms are at a higher risk of going into labor early.

Why that is, though, remains somewhat of a mystery. Researchers, NPR said, looked into — and ruled out — poverty, lack of education and genetics. The answer seemed to be something else, something related directly to growing up black in America, Richard David, a neonatologist at the University of Illinois of Chicago, told the radio station.

That difference can be explained by "racial discrimination," he said.

David and his colleague published a study in 2004 that found a link between mothers experiencing racism and premature births. Housing, income, health habits and discrimination turned out to be reliable predictors if extremely low birth weights, more so than smoking cigarettes, he said.

Other studies — including this one published in the American Journal of Public Health and this one in the International Journal of Epidemiology — seem to back up the assertion.

Photo credit: Janko Ferlič via Unsplash