For the first time, the U.S. has standardized maternal mortality data from all 50 states — a first step toward identifying ways to reduce pregnancy-related deaths across the country, experts say.
The data, released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics, show that the national maternal mortality rate — deaths caused or aggravated by pregnancy — was an estimated 17.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2018, when 658 women died.
The new statistics are similar to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the umbrella agency for the National Center for Health Statistics. The CDC has found that about 700 women die from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth every year, putting the U.S. in last place among all developed nations in terms of maternal mortality.
Using a new coding method, researchers found that of the 658 women who died of maternal causes in 2018, black women fared the worst, dying 2½ times more often than white women (37.1 vs 14.7 deaths per 100,000 live births), while Hispanic women had the lowest rate of maternal mortality, 11.8 deaths per 100,000 live births.
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