that the virus is even deadlier during pregnancy. What’s more, during the early days of the pandemic, many hospitals implemented the “one-person policy,” a rule that allowed only one person to attend a birth, making pregnant women choose between family members, increasing their isolation.
“For years, there has been implicit racial bias in American medicine,” Mary Rosser, director of Integrated Women’s Health at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, says. “America has segregated people into neighborhoods where they don’t have access to resources such as healthy food, green spaces, job opportunities, good housing, and health care. This is compounded with the stress caused by structural racism, which also impacts Black women’s health.
Joia Crear-Perry is a physician, policy expert, and founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative . She is also on the advisory board of Black Mamas Matter Alliance, a national network of more than two dozen maternal health initiatives and organizations led by Black women. Crear-Perry points out that factors leading to these alarming statistics for Black women are not based on DNA.