Black people are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, a harrowing statistic that reproductive advocate and author Khiara M. Bridges has been dedicating efforts towards examining for years. The heightened issues facing Black people in maternal healthcare have deep roots in the history of racial inequality in the US and — as Bridges' most recent work unpacks — persist now even across income levels. In her newest book, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans, Bridges brings attention to the stories and studies that demonstrate how racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor.
After previously researching how race compounded the politics of healthcare for low-income women of color, Bridges continues her work on the links between race and quality of care in medicine. Presented with expertise and empathy, Bridges offers readers a new case study that depicts how these heightened risks and gaps in maternal care exist across income levels. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Expecting Inequity looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant Black people are making in order to survive what has been called the "Black maternal health crisis."
Bridges casts a critically important light on the extensive impacts of racism across class divides, arguing that these systemic issues persist despite the privileges of wealth and access. Drawing on two years of participant-observation research and the impassioned stories of real women and families, Expecting Inequity presents a keen critique of racial issues throughout the maternal medical system and the struggles of the most vulnerable – regardless of wealth or status.
Khiara M. Bridges, JD, PhD, is an author, researcher, and scholar specializing in the intersections between race, class, and reproductive rights. She is currently the Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at UC Berkeley, and her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and the Columbia Law Review, among others. Her previously published books include Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization, The Poverty of Privacy Rights, and Critical Race Theory: A Primer.
Dr. Karen A. Scott, MD, MPH, FACOG (she/her), proudly stands as the Chief Black Feminist Physician Scientist, Founding CEO, and Owner of Birthing Cultural Rigor, LLC. She developed the first and only validated Patient Reported Experience Measure of obstetric racism© (the PREM-OB Scale® Suite), which is now available for implementation, spread, and scale as prevention and mitigation against obstetric racism. Dr. Scott is also the author of SACKRED Birth: Mobilizing A New Quality Paradigm in Obstetric Care.
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