Black OB-GYNs

In 2024 the mortality rate for Black infants in the United States was two times the rate for infants nationwide, 11.0 deaths per 1,000 live births against 5.5 [1]. In the same year, Black mothers were 49 percent more likely than mothers nationwide to receive late prenatal care or no prenatal care at all, 10.9 percent against 7.3 percent [1].

Two of the conditions that drive those numbers are already known to fall harder on Black patients. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development lists African American ethnicity among the risk factors for preeclampsia, and adds that among women who have had preeclampsia before, non-white women are more likely than white women to develop it again in a later pregnancy [3]. Fibroids follow the same shape: more than 80 percent of African American women and about 70 percent of white women will have them by age 50, and African American women are 2 to 3 times more likely to undergo hysterectomy for fibroids than other racial groups [4].

Concordance shows up in whether people come back. In a study of patients at one health system, Black patients who had a Black clinician had more than twice the odds of receiving postpartum care compared with Black patients who did not, an adjusted odds ratio of 2.26. Among white patients, having a white clinician made no statistically significant difference after adjustment [2].

That asymmetry is the finding. The postpartum visit is where preeclampsia arriving after delivery, postpartum depression and bleeding that has not settled are caught, so attendance is not a formality. If it is easier to attend when the person waiting looks like you, that is a clinical fact and not a preference.