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Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Katie Current and welcome to next question.

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Speaker 1: And that same set of double doors opened, and those

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Speaker 1: same two residents came through that set of double doors

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Speaker 1: along with another doctor that I had never laid eyes on,

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Speaker 1: and they told me that um, she passed and there

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Speaker 1: was nothing else that they could do to Saber. I

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Speaker 1: just remember the scream that my mother in law at all.

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Speaker 1: I remember, you know, her aunt falling to the floor.

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Speaker 1: I remember her brother just yelling, and I just remember

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Speaker 1: I'm just looking around at all these people that I

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Speaker 1: love so much and that love cure so much and

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Speaker 1: so much pain, and I'm just standing there in shock.

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Speaker 1: It's like no, no, no, no, and just insisting that

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Speaker 1: they something didn't happen, because literally twelve hours earlier we

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Speaker 1: walked into this hospit but with a woman that and

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Speaker 1: only was in good health, it was an exceptional health.

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Speaker 1: Not only that, I was just talking to her when

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Speaker 1: she walked away from me, I was holding her hand,

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Speaker 1: I was talking to her. How did this happen? On

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Speaker 1: April two thousand sixteen, Charles Johnson and his wife Kia

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Speaker 1: became a part of a shameful statistic America's maternal mortality

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Speaker 1: rate in the US and estimated two women die every

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Speaker 1: day from pregnancy and childbirth related causes, and six of

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Speaker 1: those deaths could have been prevented. What's scary now is

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Speaker 1: that those numbers don't take the coronavirus into consideration and

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Speaker 1: the effect a pandemic could have on an already fragile

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Speaker 1: maternal health system. The fact is the situation was bleak

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Speaker 1: long before COVID nineteen hit the US in early Over

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Speaker 1: the past three decades, while the world has drastically reduced

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Speaker 1: its maternal more vality rate, the U s is the

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Speaker 1: only developed nation to see its rate go up, and

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Speaker 1: go up significantly. The US now has one of the

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Speaker 1: highest mortality rates in the developed world, a fact that

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Speaker 1: was so shocking to me, that seems so incongruous, that

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Speaker 1: I set out to understand how this could be possible.

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Speaker 1: And so today part one of our look into America's

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Speaker 1: maternal mortality crisis and my next question, what's behind this

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Speaker 1: devastating trend. To answer that question, we have to go

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Speaker 1: back to cure a story. We were just over the moon,

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Speaker 1: ecstatic to welcome our first son, Charles. It was just

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Speaker 1: such a tremendous blessing We've always talked about having back

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Speaker 1: to back boys. You know. The first time around, we

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Speaker 1: talked about all the politically correct stuff. We're not really

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Speaker 1: worried about what jenitors. As long as it's a healthy baby,

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Speaker 1: we don't care. But by the time the second one

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Speaker 1: came around, Kira had her mind made up. She was like,

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Speaker 1: I'm a boy's mom. This is where I get in,

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Speaker 1: where I fit in. Kira and Charles were married in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve. Two years later, they welcomed their

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Speaker 1: first son, Charles the fifth, via C section in Atlanta,

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Speaker 1: and two thousand and fifteen, a job opportunity moved the

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Speaker 1: young family out to Los Angeles, where they were preparing

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Speaker 1: for the birth of their second son, who they decided

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Speaker 1: to call Langston. We interviewed about I think about three

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Speaker 1: or four different O. B. G Yan's, and we had

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Speaker 1: also made the decision very early on that we wanted

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Speaker 1: to deliver at Cedar Sinai Hospital. It was our understanding

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Speaker 1: that Cedar sign I was supposed to be, you know,

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Speaker 1: one of the best places, certainly in the state of California,

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Speaker 1: and it had a reputation of being, you know, one

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Speaker 1: of the best places in the country. Particularly in the

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Speaker 1: area of eccentrics and delivery. Beyond a little bit of

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Speaker 1: nausea early on, Kira's second pregnancy passes without incident. She's thirty,

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Speaker 1: she's fit, she's healthy, and she has the resources to

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Speaker 1: choose her care. Because Kira had a C section with

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Speaker 1: her first delivery, her doctor recommends they do the same

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Speaker 1: for the second. She's scheduled for a routine C section

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Speaker 1: on April twelve, two thousand and sixteen, at Cedars Sinai

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Speaker 1: Hospital in l A. So we walked in for Lengthson's

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Speaker 1: delivery for the scheduled C section at two o'clock, and

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Speaker 1: so Lengthon is born, perfectly healthy, tin fingers, tin toes,

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Speaker 1: you know, super super handsome, looking just like me. And

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Speaker 1: it's just we're just overwhelmed with all this, just joy

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Speaker 1: and pride of just welcoming this precious gift into our lives.

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Speaker 1: And so shortly after the delivery, they take us back

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Speaker 1: to recovery. You're sitting in the bed resting, and Lengthon

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Speaker 1: is there and the little incubator toaster thingy. And as

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Speaker 1: I'm sitting there, I looked down here's bedside, and I

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Speaker 1: begin to see the calf that are the fully catheter

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Speaker 1: coming from her bedside begin to turn pink with blood.

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Speaker 1: And so this was around four o'clock in the afternoon,

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Speaker 1: and I brought it to the attention to the doctors

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Speaker 1: and the nurses and cedars, and they come in, they

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Speaker 1: examine cure, They examine her physically and take her vitals.

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Speaker 1: They do an art sound, but very importantly, they order

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Speaker 1: a CT scan to be performed stat When the results

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Speaker 1: from those initial tests come back, they're not good. Kira's

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Speaker 1: blood levels are abnormal and the ultrasound shows fluid filling

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Speaker 1: her abdomen, but there's no action from the staff. As

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Speaker 1: CIA's condition continues to deteriorate, she's forced to wait for

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Speaker 1: the next step. The CT scan. Six o'clock comes, no

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Speaker 1: CT scan. Seven o'clock, no CT scan, eight o'clock, Still

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Speaker 1: no CT scans, Still haven't take her back to surgery.

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Speaker 1: Ten o'clock comes, no CT scan. E eleven o'clock comes,

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Speaker 1: no CT scan. At this point, Kira's pale, shivering, uncontrollably,

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Speaker 1: and sensitive to touch. In the seven hours since Charles

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Speaker 1: first noticed blood and Kira's catheter, he and his family

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Speaker 1: have been relentlessly advocating for her, asking for help, asking

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Speaker 1: for that CT scan, for attention, for anything. Were you

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Speaker 1: going crazy, Charles? I can only imagine that you were, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I think about Shirley McClain in terms of endearment,

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Speaker 1: that you were just furious. I was doing my best

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Speaker 1: to stay calm in this In this moment, I have

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Speaker 1: a wife who is clearly um fighting for her life.

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Speaker 1: I have a newborn baby. I have family members that

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Speaker 1: are all looking and saying, what's going on? We need answers.

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Speaker 1: And Kira's whole time, even her most vulnerable, her thing

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Speaker 1: to me was, baby, just stay calm in that moment.

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Speaker 1: As much as I wanted to yell and scream and

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Speaker 1: slam my fists on the nurses station or grab a

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Speaker 1: doctor by the collar, what Kira knew, even her most

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Speaker 1: vulnerable state, was that the moment I raised my voice,

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Speaker 1: the moment I become too aggressive as an African American male,

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Speaker 1: I become seen as a threat. And ultimately she was

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Speaker 1: concerned that I would be then that they would call security,

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Speaker 1: and then I'd be removed from the situation. Um. And

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Speaker 1: so even in my most heightened the point of anger,

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Speaker 1: I do my best to stay calm and communicated as

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Speaker 1: effectively as I can, and even to the point around

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Speaker 1: nine o'clock Katie, I pulled a nurse to the side

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Speaker 1: of Cedars and as I grabbed her by her hands

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Speaker 1: and I just said, look, I looked turned eyes and said,

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Speaker 1: I need help. My wife isn't doing good. They're telling

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Speaker 1: us they're gonna take her back to surgery. They're telling

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Speaker 1: us that they need to do a CT scam, but

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Speaker 1: nobody's coming. They haven't done anything. We need help. And

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Speaker 1: the woman looked me in my eyes and said, sir,

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Speaker 1: your wife just isn't a priority right now, and then

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Speaker 1: she just walked away. That CT scan never comes and

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Speaker 1: it isn't until after midnight that the staff makes the

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Speaker 1: decision to take your back to surgery. At this point,

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Speaker 1: she's extremely weak, but she's conscious and has been since

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Speaker 1: Charles first alerted the staff that something was wrong more

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Speaker 1: than eight hours ago. I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I have

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Speaker 1: all this mix of emotions, but a certain part of

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Speaker 1: me is relieved because they're finally doing something. And you know,

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Speaker 1: as we're walking down the hall uh towards the o

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Speaker 1: R and I'm walking next to her bedside and I'm

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Speaker 1: holding here's hand. She's holding my hand, and she's saying, baby,

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Speaker 1: I'm scared. I can't even really think of many times

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Speaker 1: and the you know, years I've known this woman that

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Speaker 1: she's ever uttered those words. And as I'm walking next

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Speaker 1: to her, I'm doing the only thing I know how

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Speaker 1: to do as a husband, which is just trying and

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Speaker 1: tell her that maybe everything's gonna be okay. It's gonna

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Speaker 1: be okay. They wheel her away and finally get to

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Speaker 1: this point where these double doors open and they close

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Speaker 1: behind her. Ah. They take me into a waiting room,

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Speaker 1: the exact same waiting room that we were in that afternoon,

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Speaker 1: full of mothers with these humongous bellies and balloons and

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Speaker 1: families with cameras and all this wonderful, beautiful, anxious anticipation

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Speaker 1: to welcome these new lives into the world. And now

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Speaker 1: it's almost one o'clock in the morning and I'm in

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Speaker 1: the I'm the only person in the room, all by myself,

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Speaker 1: and it is just eerily silent, and the only thing

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Speaker 1: I hear is literally the janitor's vacuum going back and forth.

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Speaker 1: And about twenty minutes go by, and the set of

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Speaker 1: double doors open and a set of two residents come

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Speaker 1: walking through the doors, and as they get closer to me,

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Speaker 1: I can see that the looks on their face it

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Speaker 1: was not good. He said, look, we couldn't be back

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Speaker 1: there any longer without letting you know what happened. Um

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Speaker 1: when he opened her up, there was a lot of

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Speaker 1: blood and she coded. And then they go on to

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Speaker 1: tell me situation is critical and they're continuing to work

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Speaker 1: on her. And at that point, it's you know, Cure's energy,

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Speaker 1: the way I am, the way we are. I was

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Speaker 1: just I'm just I'm just an optimist. When you told

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Speaker 1: me that you're continuing to work on her in her

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Speaker 1: situation is critical, that's all I needed to hear, because

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Speaker 1: I'm thinking, it's Kira. She's the closest thing that I've

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Speaker 1: ever met to a superhero. She's gonna be okay. Right,

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Speaker 1: we had to scare but she's gonna be okay, is

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Speaker 1: what I was thinking at that point. And I probably

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Speaker 1: told him I said, look, thank you for coming out

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Speaker 1: and telling me, but you're not doing anything for me

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Speaker 1: by being out here. I need you to get back

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Speaker 1: in there and bring me my wife back. Minutes later,

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Speaker 1: surrounded by Kira's loved ones, Charles gets the unimaginable news.

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Speaker 1: They told me that um she had passed and there

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Speaker 1: was nothing else that they could do to Saber. Literally

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Speaker 1: twelve hours earlier, we walked into this hospital with a

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Speaker 1: woman that not only was in good health, it was

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Speaker 1: an exceptional health. And what you're telling me, it's not computing.

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Speaker 1: This doesn't make sense. How can this happen? What did

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Speaker 1: happen is that Kira's bladder was nicked during her C section,

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Speaker 1: and for nearly ten hours from incision to returning to

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Speaker 1: the o R, Kira bled to death. When they opened

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Speaker 1: her up, they found three and a half liters of

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Speaker 1: blood in her abdomen and her heart had given out.

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Speaker 1: That was the last time I saw my wife. A laar,

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back. On April two thousand sixteen, Kira

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Speaker 1: Johnson became one of the approximately nine women who die

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Speaker 1: every year from pregnancy and childbirth related causes. To understand

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Speaker 1: how we got to Kira, we have to go back

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Speaker 1: to the nineteen eighties. For much of the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: the US enjoyed decades of essentially an uninterrupted decline in

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Speaker 1: its maternal mortality rate, but then in the nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: that rate started to tick back up. We thought maternal

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Speaker 1: mortality was essentially solved, as we could um make improvements,

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Speaker 1: we could bring down by a few deaths. But I

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Speaker 1: had no idea that actually deaths were increasing. That's Dr

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Speaker 1: Deborah Bingham, founder and executive director for the Institute for

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Speaker 1: Parnatal Quality Improvement and associate professor at the University of Maryland.

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Speaker 1: Deborah has also been working as a pernatal nurse, bedside

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Speaker 1: and administration, and in public health since nineteen seventy eight.

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Speaker 1: By the two thousand's, she was the director of nursing

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Speaker 1: for two hospitals in New York City. We only had

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Speaker 1: one death in like a five year period, so we

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Speaker 1: I didn't have any data to tell me Otherwise, I

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Speaker 1: had no personal experiences to say this is a problem.

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Speaker 1: I didn't think this was a crisis, but Deborah soon

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Speaker 1: found out it was in two thousand and six. She

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Speaker 1: was working on her doctorate when she accepted a position

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Speaker 1: in California to form the state's first Maternal Quality Care Collaborative,

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Speaker 1: an initiative to improve maternal outcomes. During the fall of

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Speaker 1: two thousand and six, she was pulled into a private

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Speaker 1: meeting with leaders from the California Department of Health. In

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Speaker 1: this private meeting, we we were shown, um that rates

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Speaker 1: of maternal death had been rising in California, and they

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Speaker 1: didn't know why, nor did we. It was shocking. We

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Speaker 1: knew our rates um even in the nineties were still

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Speaker 1: higher than other countries, so we not significantly higher, but

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Speaker 1: slightly higher than other developed countries. So UM, I should

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Speaker 1: say I knew that. I knew that our rates of

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Speaker 1: maternal deaths in the United States were a little higher

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Speaker 1: than other developed countries. So to even have any increase

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Speaker 1: was just is very shocking. I thought we were getting better,

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Speaker 1: not worse. And I still remember the room I was

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Speaker 1: in and how that felt to just like, oh my gosh,

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Speaker 1: what is going on? And is l And I didn't

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Speaker 1: know at that time whether that was just unique to

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Speaker 1: California or was that issue for the entire country. The

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Speaker 1: issue was not unique to California. It was a national

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Speaker 1: trend that would only continue to rise. In n seven,

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Speaker 1: the maternal mortality rate was seven point two, meaning for

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Speaker 1: every one hundred thousand live births, about seven women died. Today,

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Speaker 1: that rate has more than doubled to seventeen point four.

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Speaker 1: Now to really understand why more mothers are dying today

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Speaker 1: than they were thirty years ago. Debra says, you have

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Speaker 1: to look at what's changed in the medical industry. You

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Speaker 1: can't ignore the fact that we've had a sixty nearly

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Speaker 1: a six increase in cesarean birth. Now about one third

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Speaker 1: of all women give birth surgically. And then there's fewer

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Speaker 1: women having vaginal births after cesarean and so there's more

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Speaker 1: repeat c sections, which add more risks to have the

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Speaker 1: same scar open multiple times, leads to all kinds of

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Speaker 1: potential complications. Another thing that has changed over the last

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Speaker 1: thirty years, more women are being admitted earlier in labor

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Speaker 1: and what that means that that in the United States,

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Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of hospitals, don't have like

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Speaker 1: labor lounges or places where women can keep moving around,

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Speaker 1: so they're often put in bad and um don't have

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Speaker 1: freedom of movement in the early stages of labor, where

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Speaker 1: in the past we used to help women UM have

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Speaker 1: confidence go home, walk around at home, UM and come

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Speaker 1: back several hours later or maybe even their labor would stop,

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Speaker 1: which now they're being admitted, and once they're admitted, then

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Speaker 1: all this whole what's called a cascade of interventions happen,

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Speaker 1: which then lead them down a path that could have

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Speaker 1: been avoided previously. You can think of it as a

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Speaker 1: path of interventions that could start with something like medication

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Speaker 1: to induce labor and then end with an emergency c section.

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Speaker 1: Interventions aren't necessarily dangerous, but each one has the potential

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Speaker 1: to at least introduce risk to the mother. I am

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Speaker 1: a high risk perinatal nurse, meaning that I take care

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Speaker 1: of Over many years, I've taken care of very, very

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Speaker 1: sick women with very serious medical conditions, So I'm not

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Speaker 1: opposed in any way to using induction agents or interventions

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Speaker 1: medical interventions. I personally have helped intervene in many ways

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Speaker 1: when needed, but as I've learned, we should not intervene

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Speaker 1: for the heck of it. Devor says, there's one final

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Speaker 1: element that's worth noting here. When we're talking about this

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Speaker 1: increase in the maternal mortality rate over the last thirty years,

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Speaker 1: we started counting better, So we need to acknowledge that

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Speaker 1: some of this increases due to better counting, which is

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Speaker 1: a good thing because every death deserves to be counted

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Speaker 1: and needs to be counted. So we can learn from

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Speaker 1: all all of the deaths. It's a way to honor

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Speaker 1: the women who died. It's a way to honor the

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Speaker 1: teams who tried to save their lives. But changes in

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Speaker 1: the medical system still don't give us the full picture.

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Speaker 1: There are other forces, major structural issues that caused between

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Speaker 1: seven hundred and nine hundred women to die every year.

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Speaker 1: A really major problem and cause is the focus on

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Speaker 1: babies and fetuses rather than mothers. It's a problem that's

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Speaker 1: been developing over five decades. Nina Martin is an investigative

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Speaker 1: reporter at pro Publica. She spent her career reporting on

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Speaker 1: women's health. In two thousand and seventeen, Nina, along with

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Speaker 1: the team at pro Publica and her partners at NPR,

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Speaker 1: released a massive investigative report on the maternal mortality crisis.

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Speaker 1: It was called the Lost Mother's Project, and it would

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Speaker 1: go on to win a Peabody Award. Women used to die,

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Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands of women used to die

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Speaker 1: probably a year in the turn of the twentieth century

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Speaker 1: um from pregnancy and childbirth complications. And there was enormous

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Speaker 1: progress over many, many decades to to bring those numbers

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Speaker 1: down and then UM. Somewhere around the fifties and the

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Speaker 1: sixties UM the numbers got to be good enough where

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Speaker 1: people started taking the eye off there there, you know,

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Speaker 1: started really thinking about it differently. Before the nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: the fetus was essentially inaccessible to doctors. They literally couldn't

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Speaker 1: examine it, so care had to focus on the mother.

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Speaker 1: But then technological advancements and new techniques like testing amniotic

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Speaker 1: fluid and sonogram imaging made it possible for doctors to

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Speaker 1: monitor the fetus in utero. With the fetus now a patient,

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Speaker 1: the next few decades saw a pronounced shift of care

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Speaker 1: and attention away from the mother. Today, Nina Martin says,

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Speaker 1: it's clear where the priorities are. You know, think about

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Speaker 1: smoking and and and sort of some of the messaging

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Speaker 1: around smoking during pregnancy. It's not about the fact that

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Speaker 1: smoking is really bad for moms. It's about smoking for

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Speaker 1: the babies. Think about when you're giving birth. You go

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Speaker 1: in and you get hooked up to monitors and everything,

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Speaker 1: and the monitor is mostly there to check the fetal

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Speaker 1: heart rate and to make sure that the baby signs

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Speaker 1: are okay. And if the baby signs aren't okay, then

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Speaker 1: it's you know, rush, rush, rush in to get the

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Speaker 1: C section. Mom signs are monitored at a much lesser rate,

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Speaker 1: So much of the attention in the maternity ward after

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Speaker 1: mom gives birth is around feeding the baby, taking care

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Speaker 1: of the baby. What do you do? Do you know,

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Speaker 1: how are you to have the car seat? You know,

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Speaker 1: all of that. It's not about well, who's going to

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Speaker 1: take care of you when you go home? And do

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Speaker 1: you know warning signs and everything. We just kind of

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Speaker 1: kick her home with the baby and don't pay any

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Speaker 1: attention to her. I mean, it's just really shocking. But

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Speaker 1: there's still another structural issue putting so many American mothers

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Speaker 1: at risk. Will explore that right after this. When Kia

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Speaker 1: Johnson died in April of two thousand sixteen, the cause

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Speaker 1: of death would be listed as hemorrhage shock. But the

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Speaker 1: truth is much more complicated. What happened to Cira was

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Speaker 1: not just a medical tragedy, was a medical catastrophe. Everything

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Speaker 1: that could have went wrong, in fact did so. Not

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Speaker 1: only did that doctor failed Kira, but the hospital and

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Speaker 1: their policies and procedures failed her. Let's talk about the

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Speaker 1: role race might have played. Do you believe that it

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Speaker 1: did do you believe that you were you and Kira

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Speaker 1: were dismissed or not treated seriously because of because of

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Speaker 1: your skin color. Absolutely, and the reality of the situation

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Speaker 1: is this is that what is clear about what happened

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Speaker 1: on April twelve of two thousand and sixteen Seater Sina

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Speaker 1: is that the staff and the doctors and the nurses

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Speaker 1: that were responsible for Cura's life failed to seek Kira

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Speaker 1: in the same way that they would see their daughter,

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Speaker 1: or their mother or their wives. I thought that what

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Speaker 1: happened to here was an isolated incident. I thought that

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Speaker 1: a woman who is an exceptional health who has access

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Speaker 1: to care, who does all the things right, walking into

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Speaker 1: a hospital like Cedar Sinai in exceptional health and not

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Speaker 1: walking out to raise her boys, I thought that it

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Speaker 1: was an anomal I thought, this is something that doesn't

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Speaker 1: happen in two thousand and sixteen in our country. But

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Speaker 1: it does happen. And of that nine hundred or so

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Speaker 1: women who die every year, the vast majority are black.

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Speaker 1: Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy, three

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Speaker 1: to four times more likely to die during pregnancy than

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Speaker 1: white women. Monica Rose McLamore is an associate professor at

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Speaker 1: the University of California, San Francisco. She has dedicated her

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Speaker 1: entire career to reproductive health and justice. So when you

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Speaker 1: think about that, that group of between seven hundred and

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Speaker 1: nine hundred, you know, maternal deaths in the United States,

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Speaker 1: you can argue that you know, three hundred of them

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Speaker 1: potentially could be black and brown women, and so that

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Speaker 1: disparity or that difference is actually huge. And that's when

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Speaker 1: you control for education, income status, um, insurance type, place

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Speaker 1: of care, that risk is equally shared by Black women. Regardless.

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Speaker 1: If you ask Monica what's causing such a disparity, what's

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Speaker 1: killing so many Black women like Kia Johnson, he agrees

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Speaker 1: with Charles it's racism, pure and simple. The truth of

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Speaker 1: the matter is is that you know, black death during pregnancy,

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Speaker 1: in my opinion, is a canary in a coal mine.

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Speaker 1: It tells us where our priorities are. It tells us.

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Speaker 1: You know that that again, you know, we don't listen

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Speaker 1: to and or believe black women, whether it's about pain

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Speaker 1: or whether it's about pregnancy related symptoms, contractions, whatever. We

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Speaker 1: we don't value black women. It's because our lives aren't

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Speaker 1: worth saving to some people. And so you know, to

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Speaker 1: say that as a black woman is a really hard thing.

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Speaker 1: But that that's what my gut tells me, That's what

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Speaker 1: my lived experience tells me. Every time I use the

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Speaker 1: word racism, people always go to the you know, interpersonal level.

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Speaker 1: I am calling you a bad person in there for

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Speaker 1: your racist That's not what I'm talking about. I actually

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Speaker 1: think most people actually inherently are trying to do as

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Speaker 1: well as they can do with what they have, and

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Speaker 1: when you know better, you should do better. But the

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Speaker 1: truth of the matter is, structural racism is a different

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Speaker 1: beast altogether, um because it's really about institutions, policies, and

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Speaker 1: structures that actually privilege one group over another based on

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Speaker 1: race or ethnicity. We know that there is an overrepresentation

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Speaker 1: of of of black people in poverty, and again that's

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Speaker 1: a structural racism problem. When you think back to things

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Speaker 1: like you know, red Line, where you know people were

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Speaker 1: denied mortgages or given high risk mortgages, like it is

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Speaker 1: a structural reason why Black people are overrepresented in being poor.

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Speaker 1: I think it also shows up in terms of the

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Speaker 1: differential treatment that people receive based on insurance status. Why

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Speaker 1: are we giving people different care? You know when clinical

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Speaker 1: guidelines are standard based on who's paying for it back

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Speaker 1: in hospitals. Systematic racism also shows up in the actual

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Speaker 1: makeup of who is overwhelmingly caring for black mothers. We

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Speaker 1: have not had enough courage and diversifying our health care workforce.

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Speaker 1: The fact that you know, I believe one percent of

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Speaker 1: physicians in the United States are are Black Americans, and

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Speaker 1: I don't think nursing is much better. UM, we need

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Speaker 1: to diversify our healthcare workforce. A structural problem is if

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Speaker 1: we don't believe that people of color and black people

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Speaker 1: in particular have the aptitude or capacity to be able

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Speaker 1: to care for communities that we come from, live and

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Speaker 1: work and serve UM. I think that's just like a

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Speaker 1: really really racist thing to think. At both the individual

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Speaker 1: level and at a structural level. We can see the

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Speaker 1: effects of institutional racism play out right now with the

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Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic. While anyone can get COVID nineteen, racial data

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Speaker 1: shows that more Black Americans are contracting and dying from

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Speaker 1: COVID than whites. One analysis showed that in Chicago, black

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Speaker 1: residents so far make up of the deaths there, get

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Speaker 1: the account for only nine percent of the city's population.

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Speaker 1: In New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic. COVID

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Speaker 1: is hitting black and brown neighborhoods the hardest, like in

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Speaker 1: Jackson Heights, Queens, which is the most ethically diverse neighborhood

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Speaker 1: in the country. It's a very underserved community and the

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Speaker 1: community right now is being hit very, very hard by

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Speaker 1: the COVID epidemic. You may recognize Dr Tracy bone Hemmerdinger

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Speaker 1: from last week's episode. She's the chief of Obstetrics at

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Speaker 1: the Elmhurst Hospital Center. The population that we generally see

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Speaker 1: at Elmhurst is mixed community of new immigrants. We see

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Speaker 1: all different ethnic backgrounds. The number one language spoken is Spanish,

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Speaker 1: followed I think very closely by Bengali. And I think

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Speaker 1: that a lot of the patients that we see fall

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Speaker 1: into the category of people who can't social distance because

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Speaker 1: they live with large numbers of people in their homes,

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Speaker 1: people who are responsible for caring for not only many children,

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00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: but also their parents and their extended family uh and

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Speaker 1: and people whose jobs are either domestic workers or you know,

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Speaker 1: people whose jobs and livelihood may be cut off completely

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Speaker 1: and not have any access to their regular daily needs,

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Speaker 1: and so I think that that puts them at significant

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Speaker 1: risk for any illness. Before COVID nineteen hit, Elmer's was

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00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:53,400
Speaker 1: running programs in partnership with the Maternal Hospital Quality Improvement Network,

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00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 1: a part of a citywide plan to reduce maternal deaths

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Speaker 1: and life threatening complications among women of color. There are

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Speaker 1: other initiatives as well. In California, for example, a bill

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Speaker 1: that passed last year requires implicit bias training for all

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Speaker 1: healthcare workers. But Monica Macklemore says, it's just to start

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Speaker 1: to really address something so widespread, prevalent, and daunting as

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Speaker 1: institutional racism, you have to begin by making things better

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Speaker 1: for those who have it the worst. If you're centering

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Speaker 1: the people who are most vulnerable, everybody's care should actually

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00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:34,400
Speaker 1: get better because then those innovations should be translated for everybody.

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Speaker 1: But a lot of people don't believe that that if

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Speaker 1: you center to people who are experiencing the greatest amount

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Speaker 1: of burden, they think they're losing something. And I'm like, no,

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00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: you don't understand. If we are really really like making

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Speaker 1: things better for the people who have it worse, everybody

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00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: should should actually experience an improvement in their care in

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Speaker 1: industrialized nations. Our maternal death rate is one of the

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Speaker 1: highest for income countries. We can do better. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: have to be like this. Tomorrow on a special episode

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Speaker 1: of Next Question, Part two of our look at America's

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Speaker 1: maternal mortality crisis. Don't worry your little head about it,

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00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: because you're fine now in your baby spine, and go

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00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:25,680
Speaker 1: home and live your life and be happy that everything's okay.

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Speaker 1: And so her experience was completely erased. Why maternal deaths

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Speaker 1: are only the tip of the iceberg being a professional athlete,

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00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 1: I just thought that will never happen to me. An

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00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: intimate conversation with Olympian Alison Felix and the courageous people

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Speaker 1: who are working to save American mothers. That's tomorrow on

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Speaker 1: Next Question. To understand how the coronavirus is affecting pregnant women,

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00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 1: check out last week's episode called how Do You have

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00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 1: a Baby during a Pandemic? On Apple podcast, the I

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00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: Next Question with Katie Couric is a production of I

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00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Katie Curreic Media. The executive producers are

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00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: Katie Currik, Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer

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00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 1: is Lauren Hansen. Our show producer is Bethan Macaluso. The

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00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clements. Editing by

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00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagan and Lowell Berlante, Mixing by Dylan Fagan.

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00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 1: Our researcher is Gabriel Loser. For more information on today's episode,

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00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: go to Katie Currek dot com and follow us on

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00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram at Katie Couric. For more podcasts for

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00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:55,120
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,

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00:31:55,280 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,