Quick Points
- The Black Maternal Health crisis is an access to healthcare issue. Access to quality maternity care is a critical component of overall maternal health and helps to produce positive birth outcomes.
- Black women are 3 to 4 times more likely to die during childbirth. Black infants are 2.4 times more likely to die in the first year.
- 60 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable.
- 15.9% of Black women in North Carolina of childbearing age are uninsured.In Medicaid expansion states, the uninsured rate is nearly half the rate in non-expansion states.
- Rural areas in northeast and southeast North Carolina have low access to maternity care or live in a maternity care desert where obstetric care is unavailable.