George Mason University published shocking data Monday (Aug. 17th) supporting racial disparities in infant mortality rates.
What We Know:
- The data reported by George Mason University examined 1.8 million hospital births in the state of Florida between 1992 and 2015. The results suggested that Black newborn babies are three times more likely to die when cared for by a White doctor.
“In the United States, racial disparities in human health can impact even the first hours of a person’s life.”
- The mortality rate of Black newborns decreased by between 39% and 58% when Black physicians were in charge of the birth rather than their White counterparts. Conversely, the mortality rate for White babies was largely unaffected by the doctor’s race.
- Although the study never explicitly reported the reasoning behind the trend it wrote, “Taken with this work, it gives warrant for hospitals and other care organizations to invest in efforts to reduce such biases and explore their connection to institutional racism.”
- The report by George Mason University was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
This new shocking data demonstrates the ways institutional racism can manifest and how it affects every facet of the human experience from the very beginning.
