For much of the developed world, childbirth has become safer with each passing generation. Medical advances, better prenatal care, and stronger public health systems have dramatically reduced the chances that bringing a child into the world would cost a woman her life.

Unless she’s Black American.

That stubborn contradiction framed a Word In Black panel discussion last week, where physicians, researchers, and community health leaders explored why members of the African diaspora still die from pregnancy-related complications at disproportionately high rates—even as maternal mortality falls in developed nations.

Their conclusion was unequivocal: the disparity is not about biology but about lack of access and opportunity–along with unequal systems. The issues that jeopardize Black women’s maternal health happen long before she goes into labor.

Moderated by Jennifer Porter Gore, Word In Black’s health correspondent, the livestreamed conversation brought together three panelists whose focus is confronting the maternal health crisis using community-based solutions.

‘I Knew It Wasn’t Biological’

Tamara Mason, director of Maternal and Child Health Collective Impact at the March of Dimes in Atlanta, discussed the policy and public health barriers that continue to drive disparities. Kay Matthews, founder and executive director of the Shades of Blue Project, spoke about the lived experiences of Black mothers’ mental health needs while navigating pregnancy, loss, and the postpartum period.

And Dr. Kaytura Felix, host of the Deep Care podcast and a distinguished scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, explained why improving outcomes requires expanding the definition of maternal care to include entire communities in which Black families live.

When she decided to investigate the Black maternal health crisis, “I knew it was not genetics. I knew it wasn’t biological,” said Felix. She began researching the crisis after noticing that Black women in her native Dominica, a small island in the Caribbean, weren’t dying in childbirth as often as in the U.S.

That’s despite both groups sharing the “same genetic pool,” Felix said, noting that the ancestors of Black Dominicans also have endured the transatlantic slave trade.

The difference between the U.S. and Dominica was the system, Felix said.

“I knew that there had to be racism in the [American] medical establishment,” she said. “And so, the question I asked myself is, ‘What is the Black community doing about the black maternal health crisis?’”

Midwives a ‘Game-Changer’

Felix’s research uncovered the extensive role of midwives and led to the launch of the Black Birthing Future Study, through which she learned more about a model of care that differed greatly from one she’d seen as a medical doctor. The study is built on interviews with community midwives, doulas, mental health therapists, and their clients.

The solutions are already in the community. Collectively putting aside our egos, how can we do this bigger but address what’s happening in our community now? Because we can’t wait.

Tamara Mason, March of Dimes, Atlanta

Midwives, she said, treat childbirth as “a community and family event,” in which the pregnant woman is “the sun” and all care and support decisions revolve around her needs.

“Client after client after client told us, ‘My midwife loves me,’” Felix said. “And that is not just a ‘nice-to-have.’ That’s a game changer” that can drive better outcomes for Black women in the U.S.

‘Mental Health is Maternal Health’

Black midwives “are working really hard to make sure that the family is supported,” she said. They also connect their clients to doulas, lactation specialists, and neighbors who show up with diapers and food.

Matthews founded the Shades of Blue Project in Houston — and later, Black Maternal Mental Health Week — after her daughter was stillborn. Amid a devastating tragedy, she said, she experienced racism in the healthcare system first-hand.

“My mental health [struggle] is what had me out here saving myself,” she said. “That is no way to live.”

Yet the trauma she experienced, Matthews said, went unnamed for years: “There was no correlation being made to infant loss and postpartum depression, which I was clearly going through… I did have to save myself with no guidance.”

Today, she says, her organization argues that mental health is as important as prenatal care and care during childbirth: “Mental health is a part of maternal health.”

Pregnancy and Finances

While it may seem obvious that a pregnant person’s economic condition is important, panelists said there’s not enough understanding about how drastically financial stability can affect physical and emotional health.

Mason of the March of Dimes in Atlanta said data from her city illustrate the point.

Atlanta is “the number one income inequality city in the country,” she said, adding that the gap between the haves and have-nots is so great that a child born into a low-income family has only a 4% chance of escaping poverty in her lifetime.

“Who is in poverty?” she said. “Black women of reproductive age.”

Mason went on: “Pregnant women do not live in a vacuum. If we have a mom that is poor, if we have a mom who is food insecure, who’s housing insecure, all of these outcomes are going to impact her pregnancy journey.”

Matthews agreed, pointing out that financial insecurity often keeps women from seeking help in the first place — even help that’s free. Her organization began offering diapers and wipes at its emotional support groups because so many mothers otherwise couldn’t afford to attend.

“I’ll never have someone sit across my desk and need diapers, because diapers start right now at about $25 a case,” she said, recalling her own experience being told she “made 73 cents [per hour] too much” to qualify for temporary public assistance.

‘Poor People Know What to Do’

To address those root economic pressures, Mason’s organization piloted a guaranteed basic income program in two high-poverty Atlanta ZIP codes. The idea, she said. traces back to a quote attributed to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Give them money to start to pull themselves out of poverty. And poor people know what to do… they’re making it happen,” Mason quoted King as saying. The program gave 25 pregnant women $1,000 a month for a year, no strings attached.

“The premise is that we know we’re not going to be able to make a change in that indicator in one year,” she said. “But if we start there, right, that’s the gold standard — high rates of preterm birth — if we start to reduce the stress and strain of these moms, then eventually they will have better birthing outcomes.”

Still, the panelists agreed that even where community solutions exist, policies and institutional barriers often stand between pregnant women and the help they need.

For example, Felix said, most insurance still doesn’t cover midwifery care, and many states require midwives to practice only under a physician’s supervision. When midwives refer patients to hospitals for a higher level of care, as they are trained to do, they are often met with hostility rather than cooperation.

She described one case in which a midwife rushed a client to the hospital due to complications–only for hospital staff to throw shade on the client: “So that’s the girl that tried to have the baby at home.”

Reforming the System

Felix called for insurance reform, less restrictive licensing laws, and broader physician education about the different types of midwifery care.

“All states should allow midwifery and all paths to midwifery,” she said. “Not just nurse midwifery and certified community midwifery, but also traditional midwifery and apprenticeship.”

Ultimately, panelists agreed that no single organization can solve the crisis alone and that trying to do so only slows progress. “We should not all be doing ‘all the things,’” Matthews said. “We have to start leaning into accountability for the roles that we play.”

Mason, who is also a certified doula, echoed the point.

“The solutions are already in the community,” she said. “Collectively putting aside our egos, how can we do this bigger but address what’s happening in our community now? Because we can’t wait.”

For Felix, the path forward also means reconnecting with practices Black communities relied on for generations before they could access the modern medical system.

“We need to go back and reclaim some of the ancestral knowledge that we’ve had,” she said, describing midwifery as one way to restore what she called “mothering the mother” — the community support many new parents, including herself, have had to go without.

“I lost my mother four months before I had a baby, and I was a mother,” she said. “I did it by myself.”

By reviving that collective care, so prevalent in Black communities, it is possible to reverse the crisis: “We can address it in a collective way, and tap into the collectivist mindset that is part of African descended people. We are collectivist and communal, and we are really tapping into those superpowers that we have.”

Based on reporting by Seattle Medium.

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By Jennifer Porter Gore | Word In Black

Black men are dying from a mental health crisis that too often goes unseen.

As deaths from suicide, overdoses, and alcohol abuse rise among Black Americans, experts warn that cultural expectations around masculinity, mistrust of mental health systems, and a shortage of Black providers are preventing many men from getting help before it is too late.

In the waning days of the pandemic, the U.S. saw the number of deaths from suicide, alcohol use, and drug overdoses — called “deaths of despair” — among Black Americans surpass occurrences among whites for the first time. Between 2013 and 2022, the rates of these deaths tripled among Black Americans.

Painful numbers

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show twice as many people died by suicide in 2023 as from homicide. In fact, it was the second leading cause of death among people aged 10 to 34 and the fourth leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 35 and 44.

That same year, the suicide rate among males was nearly 4 times higher than among females, with Black men also being four times as likely to die from suicide as Black women.

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Among younger Black men, the trajectory is especially troubling.

University of Georgia researchers last year found that childhood exposure to trauma, poverty, and racism leads many young Black men to believe they don’t have value and are unable to trust community support systems.  Between 2007 and 2020, the suicide rate among Black youth ages 10 to 17 nearly tripled, rising faster than any other racial or ethnic group.

Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 20 and 24. For Black men in the same age group, however, the suicide rate surpassed that of their white peers in 2024—a dreadful historical first.

Playing tough can be fatal

Traditional definitions of masculinity — stoicism, staunchly self-reliant and emotionally controlled — are found to increase the likelihood that men of all age ranges will avoid professional help. Researchers find those men fear being judged as weak, a perception that significantly raises stress and contributes to untreated depression and anxiety.

In 2023, just 17 percent of American men saw a mental health professional, roughly half the rate of women. Among men who said they were depressed, only one in four received any counseling or therapy in the past year. Black adults, however, were 36 percent less likely to have received mental health treatment in the previous year, even though they had similar or higher rates of anxiety and depression as whites.

In a newly released report, the JED Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the emotional health and preventing suicide for teens and young adults, found that boys are socialized from an early age to internalize their emotions rather than express them.

Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for people between ages 20 and 24. For Black men in the same age group, however, the suicide rate surpassed that of their white peers in 2024—a dreadful historical first.

The report, titled The Emotional Lives of Boys and Young Men, found that when that distress surfaces, it often looks very different from the depression and inactivity seen in girls and young women.

Instead, according to the report, boys and young men are more likely to disguise their distress by withdrawing, displaying anger or aggression, or engaging in daredevil behavior— reckless driving, substance abuse, compulsive gambling, or risky sexual encounters.

At the same time, online environments such as video games and social media can be a double-edged sword, according to the report.

“Digital environments can amplify both harmful and supportive pathways, with opportunities for humor, distraction, and connection,” the report says, but also provides “exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying, and gambling and sports betting.”

Black provider shortage

While research indicates that having a caregiver of the same gender and race is beneficial, Black practitioners are still an extreme minority in all segments of the mental health profession.  Only 4% of psychologists are Black, and just 2% of psychiatrists, who are medical doctors, and a scant 11% of licensed professional counselors are Black.

But research has shown that peer-based support groups can be effective in communities plagued by a lack of access to mental health professionals, as well as mistrust of clinical environments.

Organizations such as JED have launched partnerships with fraternal organizations to reverse these trends. Last month, JED announced it is working with Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. as part of  The JED Greek-Letter Organizations (GLO) programs.

“The Jed Foundation recognizes that fraternities and sororities are powerful communities for connection, leadership, and identity development,” Dr. ShirDonna Lawrence, senior manager of JED GLO, said in a statement. “This makes them essential partners in advancing student mental health and well-being on and off campus.”

It’s also a mutually beneficial relationship, which “strengthens Alpha’s enduring mission and advances JED’s work in culturally responsive, community-centered mental health promotion,” Lawrence said.

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Assemblymember Mike A. Gipson (D-Carson) says a deadly Fourth of July weekend shooting in Compton that claimed the life of one of his former staff members underscores the urgent need for stronger gun safety laws at both the state and federal levels. 

The shooting was one of several acts of gun violence reported across California over the holiday weekend, renewing debate over firearm regulations and the limits states face in enacting gun control measures. 

At a block party in Compton, a gunman opened fire on a crowd, killing Eric Washington, a former California Assembly aide, and Meah Bordenave-Jenkins, while injuring three others. 

The deaths of Washington and Bordenave-Jenkins left deep wounds in the community. 

Bordenave-Jenkins, 19, was a sophomore studying nursing at the University of Nevada. She was staying with her sister for the summer. 

Her mother, Ebone Jenkins, said her daughter wanted to become a neonatal travel nurse and was active in church.  

Washington served as a field deputy for Gipson before later working for HACLA, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles. To honor his memory, HACLA established the Eric Washington Community Impact Awards. 

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Washington’s mother, Tina Johnson, told California Black Media (CBM) that her son was “deeply compassionate” and a “mentor to everyone,” including his own father, whom Washington helped adjust to life after incarceration. She said he was committed to public service and wanted to address gun violence. 

For Gipson, Washington’s death was both personal and political. 

Gipson and Washington worked together for years, united by a shared commitment to reducing gun violence in their communities. Gipson said Washington’s passing has been deeply felt. In 2020, Gipson’s own son, an innocent bystander, was injured in a violent shooting that same year. 

The Compton tragedy also comes as California and other states continue to navigate legal challenges to their authority to regulate firearms. 

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Wolford v. Lopez invalidated portions of a Hawaii law prohibiting people with concealed-carry permits from bringing firearms onto private property that is open to the public without the owner’s consent. 

Some advocates worry the ruling could weaken states’ ability to enact gun safety legislation. 

Gipson is among those expressing concern. 

“Because of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down protections in Wolford v. Lopez and rule against Hawaii’s common-sense laws, a pattern continues where the U.S. federal government cannot guarantee us the most basic protections,” Gipson told CBM. 

Throughout his legislative career, Gipson has championed firearm regulations aimed at creating safer communities. He was among the first California lawmakers to pursue ghost gun regulation through Assembly Bill (AB) 879. 

Currently, Gipson is working to pass AB 2339, the Accuracy in Mental Health Reporting Act. The bill would ensure that “prohibited persons are accurately identified in a timely fashion” and reported to the California Department of Justice to restrict their access to firearms. 

The measure has garnered strong support, including from California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

While Gipson believes state legislation can reduce gun violence, he argues that meaningful progress also requires stronger federal action. 

“Just doing the basics, like background checks, putting age limits, red flag warnings—the list just goes on and on. If they would just take just the basics, we can decrease a lot of gun violence,” said Gipson. 

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