A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report issued Monday indicates that more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the nation from 2017 to 2019 were preventable.
Data on more than 1,000 pregnancy-related deaths from 36 states within that date range was used to compile the report. This data was shared with the CDC through the Maternal Mortality Review Information Application.
Of those cases, 839 (84.2%) were preventable and 157 (15.8%) were non-preventable, according to the CDC. Included deaths occurred during pregnancy (21.6%), delivery (13.2%) or up to one-year postpartum (65.3%).
“A death is considered preventable if the committee determines that there was at least some chance of the death being averted by one or more reasonable changes to patient, community, provider, facility, and/or systems factors,” the CDC explained.
Mental health conditions were the most common underlying causes of pregnancy related deaths at 22.7% (224 cases). These conditions include deaths of suicide, overdose or poisoning related to substance use disorder, the CDC said.
This year, the federal government announced increased funding for mental health programs, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court also delivered the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health opinion that overturned decades of abortion protections.
Following mental health conditions, the two most common underlying conditions were hemorrhage at 13.7%, cardiac and coronary conditions at 12.8%. Other pregnancy-related death underlying conditions listed were: infection, embolism-thrombotic issues, cardiomyopathy, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, amniotic fluid embolism, injury, cerebrovascular accident, cancer, metabolic/endocrine conditions and pulmonary conditions.
White people accounted for 46.6% of the pregnancy related deaths, followed by Black people (31.4%) and Hispanic people (14.4%), Asian people (3.4%), American Indian and Alaska Native people (0.9%), Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (0.6%) and other (2.7%).
Pregnancy-related deaths impacted people age 30-34 the most at 29.3% and people with a high school degree but no college education (40%) accounted for more of the deaths than people at other education levels.
According to CDC data from 2020, there are around 3.6 million annual live births in the U.S. For 2020, the maternal mortality rate for 2020 was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births and the infant mortality rate was 541.1 deaths per 100,000 live births.
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