Clinical Chats: a Podcast for Sexual and Reproductive Health Professionals · Clinical Training Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health

Addressing Pregnancy-Associated Deaths: An Overview

·22 min·1 clip

Pregnancy-associated death includes suicide, homicide, car accidents, cancer, and obstetric causes.

1. Clinical Chats: a Podcast for Sexual and Reproductive Health Professionals opens with an overview of pregnancy-associated death in the U.S. and its relationship to Title X clinicians. 2. Host staff introduce Maeve Wallace, PhD, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and associate director of the Mary Amelia Center for Women's Health Equity Research. 3. The episode asks what pregnancy-associated death means, why it differs from pregnancy-related death, and why those distinctions matter for counting deaths in pregnant and postpartum people. 4. Dr. Wallace defines pregnancy-related death as death from pregnancy or its management, naming hemorrhage, preeclampsia, hypertension, and obstetric embolism as examples. 5. She explains that maternal mortality refers to deaths within 42 days after the end of pregnancy, while pregnancy-related mortality extends to one year postpartum. 6. She defines pregnancy-associated death as death during pregnancy or within one year postpartum from any cause, including suicide, homicide, car accidents, and cancer. 7. Dr. Wallace says the broader pregnancy-associated category is needed because CDC maternal mortality rates count only obstetric causes. 8. She says external causes, especially violent deaths, are occurring with alarming frequency among pregnant and postpartum people. 9. Dr. Wallace identifies homicide as consistently among the top causes of pregnancy-associated death in the U.S. 10. She says the most recent national data showed pregnancy-associated homicide and suicide exceeding mortality from any single obstetric cause. 11. The episode gives 2021 national figures of about 2,260 pregnancy-associated deaths and a maternal mortality rate of 33 deaths per 100,000 live births. 12. Dr. Wallace says homicide was about 5 to 5.5 deaths per 100,000 live births and suicide about 3 deaths per 100,000 live births. 13. She says maternal mortality review committees found about 80% of pregnancy-related deaths were preventable. 14. Dr. Wallace calls every homicide a preventable death and treats suicide in the same prevention frame. 15. She says the CDC reported a sizable increase in maternal mortality in 2021 compared with 2018 through 2020. 16. She links that rise to disrupted in-person care, economic inequality, food insecurity, the Delta variant, and increased intimate partner violence in 2020 and 2021. 17. Dr. Wallace says Black, Indigenous, and other people of color experience disproportionate homicide and maternal mortality compared with white pregnant and postpartum people. 18. She describes the interview as a public-health conversation that moves from national data to upstream structural causes and then to clinical screening opportunities. 19. Clinicians, midwives, pediatricians, and Title X staff who see postpartum patients or people who may become pregnant would benefit most. 20. Listeners focused only on obstetric statistics or short clinical updates may skip the broader structural analysis.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Clinical Chats: a Podcast for Sexual and Reproductive Health Professionals