Studies tie high death rate of black babies to racism

Previous studies have cited stress as a factor but haven’t explored the source of the stress.

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON — For decades, health experts have tried to determine why black American babies are twice as likely to die as white infants are.

A new series of studies from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Health Policy Institute, along with a small but growing number of neonatalogists nationwide, suggests that the stressful effects of racism play a role.

“That’s the elephant in the room,” said Michael Lu, an obstetrician-gynecologist and professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who studies disparities in infant health. “When we’re studying racial disparities, for decades people have looked at stress and infant mortality without looking at the reasons for the stress.”

Black infant mortality is a complicated puzzle that includes poverty, poor nutrition, inadequate prenatal care, teen pregnancy, heredity, high blood pressure, stress, obesity, low birth weights and prematurity. However, some neonatologists and child health advocates have pushed for more research to get behind the social reasons why these factors seem to take a higher toll on black infants than they do on other babies.

Sources of stress

For the 600 black women in Atlanta who participated in a related study on the effects of racial discrimination on health, the reasons for their higher stress levels ranged from hearing white teachers comment on “those kids” to working extra long hours to win acceptance from white colleagues.

“The pregnancy scares the life out of me because I am pregnant with a baby boy, and I know how black boys are treated in this society,” one study participant told researchers from Spelman College and Emory University in Atlanta.

In his research, Lu and his colleagues found that the disproportionately higher number of fast-food restaurants and liquor stores, lower number of grocery stores and the higher cost of fresh produce in many urban, predominately black communities caused poorer pregnant black women to make stressful choices about what to eat and where to live. So did the higher crime rates in these communities and worries about sending children to poorly equipped, understaffed schools.