Black and Indigenous communities bear the Spooky camping crew cute ghost 2023 shirt but I will buy this shirt and I will love this brunt of those maternal deaths: Native American and Alaska Native women in the United States are three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. It’s even worse in Washington state, which is home to 29 federally recognized tribes. A report published in early 2023 by the Washington State health department shows Native mothers die eight and a half times more often than white mothers during pregnancy or within a year after, which is more than any other race. And perhaps most surprising: that risk is equally shared among Indigenous women, regardless of income, education, or geographical location. For white Americans, the richer and more educated you are, the less likely you are to die in childbirth, research shows. But, the CDC notes, the same isn’t true for Native women.
“Often what we’re told as Native women is: we’re unhealthy. We’re too addicted, too fat, too chronically ill, too poor,” said Hummingbird founder Camie Goldhammer, a Sisseton-Wahpeton tribal citizen. “What that does is put the Spooky camping crew cute ghost 2023 shirt but I will buy this shirt and I will love this onus on the people who are dying. I really believe that moms and babies dying is the failure of our health care system.” Hummingbird doula Devi Mudaliar (right) helps expecting mother Jennifer Hensel Sherell entertain her toddler. More than 80 percent of all maternal deaths, the report found, were preventable. Because the problem is deeply rooted in systemic inequity in the U.S., the solution is coming from the inside: In order to save Native mothers’ lives, Native mothers and aunties are taking on the cause themselves, by providing free physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual support to Indigenous mothers and their families before, during, and after their baby is born. Since 2019, Goldhammer has built a team of five Indigenous doulas, who have provided culture-specific help to more than 150 Native pregnant women and their babies in the first thousand days of their baby’s life. Their maternal and infant mortality rate is zero.
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