Miles from help: a project on maternal health in rural places
Pregnant women living in rural places in the United States struggle to find care. More than half of all women who live in rural places have to drive more than half an hour to get to a hospital that can care for them when they’re pregnant, giving birth, or caring for a newborn baby.
For many reasons, rural women are more likely to die in childbirth, and their babies are more likely to die within their first year of life. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the lack of care–people who live in rural places also tend to have more health problems and are more likely to be living in poverty.
But women with health problems are exactly the people who need doctors. And they don’t have them. While 15 percent of America’s women live in rural places, only 6 percent of obstetricians and gynecologists do.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Like with (almost) anything in our country, the situation is worse for women of color: In 2014, black infants from rural places were about twice as likely to die in their first year of life as rural white babies.
This project aims to understand why pregnant women in rural places aren’t receiving the care that they need and what we can do about it.
- Small Red - No Responsive Documents
- Large Red - Rejected
- Small Yellow - Awaiting Acknowledgement
- Large Yellow - Awaiting Response
- Small Blue - Fix Required
- Small Green - Partially Completed
- Large Green - Completed
1 Article
In rural hospitals, women are dying during childbirth - and states aren’t keeping track
MuckRock asked all 50 states for a copy of the data frame that they use to track pregnancy-related deaths, in order to figure out if every department is using a similar system, or even tracking the same information. Spoiler alert: they’re all doing their own thing.
50 Requests
Fix Required
Adanya Lustig sent this request to the Department of Health of Ohio
Completed
Adanya Lustig sent this request to the Pennsylvania Department of Health of Pennsylvania
Completed
Adanya Lustig sent this request to the Department of Health of Tennessee
Fix Required
Adanya Lustig sent this request to the Oklahoma Department of Health of Oklahoma
Completed
Adanya Lustig sent this request to the Department of Health of South Dakota
Completed
Adanya Lustig sent this request to the Department of Health, Maternal and Child Health division of Minnesota