Why are Milwaukee’s black babies dying?

[uawchild]

By: Daniel Dale Washington Bureau, The Toronto Star

"The infant mortality rate for the city’s white babies is similar to Canada’s. The death rate for its black babies compares to the Gaza Strip.

MILWAUKEE—Dasia Oliver, eight months pregnant and working at Walmart, didn’t particularly want to spend her free time in a hospital class on safe sleeping for babies.
Then she thought of a friend whose baby died in bed this summer. Then she thought of the brother she never met. He died in bed as a baby, too.

“I’d rather sit here for an hour,” Oliver, a 20-year-old black woman, said at the hospital in November, “than be planning a funeral.”
There are a whole lot of baby funerals in Milwaukee. At most of them, it is a black mom crying over the casket.
Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in America. Its white infants die at around the same rate as infants in Canada. Its black infants die at around the same rate as infants in the Gaza Strip.

Five deaths per 1,000 births for white babies. Fifteen deaths per 1,000 births for black babies.
“Babies just dying every day,” said Mary Love, 25 and expecting her third child, at the popular Blanket of Love prenatal class held weekly at a black church. “It’s not making no sense.” "


Denelle McManus with her son Cordae, 4. McManus's other son, Tavion, died after eight days in the hospital following his premature birth in 2007. Two-thirds of black infant deaths in Milwaukee are the result of premature birth.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/12/03/why-are-milwaukees-black-babies-dying.html

==============

The bottom 40% of the American workforce continues to suffer in the shadows.

[Scuba]

1. The plight of our black brothers and sisters in Milwaukee is beyond horrible ...

http://www.jsonline.com/business/wisconsin-tops-nation-in-black-joblessness-study-finds-b99469404z1-297604661.html

Unemployment among African-Americans in Wisconsin last year was the highest of any of the 50 states, according to a study released Thursday by the center-left Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

At 19.9% — or 1 in 5 working-age people — the black unemployment rate in Wisconsin is nearly three times higher than the highest state white unemployment rate (7% in Nevada) and significantly higher than the national black unemployment rate of 11%, the think tank found.

Wisconsin's black unemployment rate is twice the overall national unemployment rate at the peak of the recession — 9.9% in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The findings are consistent with more than a decade of statistics and studies that show that African-Americans in Wisconsin and its largest city, Milwaukee, often find themselves at the economic and social extremes compared with the rest of the nation. That has been the case with a broad range of social distress indicators, from infant mortality and poverty to high school dropouts and incarceration.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/life-expectancy-gap-again-wisconsin-blacks-are-near-the-bottom-b99328516z1-271469881.html

Wisconsin is the only state in the nation that failed to narrow the life expectancy gap between blacks and whites.

...

Wisconsin ranks near the bottom in public health funding. Federal and state money combined, Wisconsin spent about $42 per person on public health in 2013, ranking No. 49. The national average was about $92 per person.

...

In 1990, the first year of data the scientists studied, white men in the United States lived on average 8.1 years longer than black men, and white women lived 5.5 years longer than black women. Twenty years later, this gap had shrunk to 5.4 years for men and 3.8 years for women.

While New York outperformed the other states, shaving 5.6 years off its life expectancy gap for black men, and 3.1 years for black women, Wisconsin was the only state in which the life expectancy of whites and blacks actually got worse. Over the 20 years of data used in the study, the life expectancy gap for African-American men in Wisconsin went from 7.7 years to 7.9 years. For African-American women, the gap increased by 1.6 years.

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/03/228733846/wisconsin-prisons-incarcerate-most-black-men-in-u-s

The United States prison population is still the world's highest, with more than 1.5 million people behind bars. Black men are more likely to be sent to prison than white men, and often on drug offenses. A study from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee looked at that state's incarceration rates and found they were the highest in the country for black men.

The University of Wisconsin researchers say their analysis was truly eye-opening. They found that Wisconsin's incarceration rate for black men — 13 percent — was nearly double the country's rate.

[JayhawkSD]

2. One thing used to help

In 1955, when my father retired as an Air Force flight surgeon, he went to work for the City of Milwaukee as Director of Maternal and Child Health. He started a radio call-in show where mothers could call in and ask questions about taking care of their babies. It started out one day a week and became so popular that it expanded to three days a week.

He opened free clinics in low income neighborhoods and encouraged women to bring their babies to the clinic when they were not sick. They were called, appropriately enough, "Well Baby Clinics," and were mobbed. They had hours, but the doors never closed if anyone was in line to be seen.

He tried to retire from that job several times but was persuaded to stay each time. It didn't take much, he loved doing it. He finally did retire to Arizona at age 74.

[vanlassie]

3. That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[dragonlady]

4. A film that explains some of this

A few months back I saw a film that documented the higher rate of premature and low-birth-weight babies born to African-American women. The reason for this, which seems quite probable to me, is the stress of just being black in America. Here is a good summary of this film, part of a series, from Wikipedia.

Episode 2: When the Bough Breaks (27 min.)

Produced by Tracy Heather Strain, Randall MacLowry, and Eric Stange; Directed by Tracy Heather Strain

This episode examines the phenomenon that African American women, on average, are significantly more likely to give birth to premature and/or low-weight babies than white women, even when studies control for factors like income and education. Interviews with neonatologists James Collins (Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago) and Richard David (Stroger Hospital of Cook County) present the theory that this inequality could be due in part to lifelong exposure to the chronic stress of racism. After providing evidence against genetic causes for the disparity, the program further explores how exposure to racism might affect health. Obstetrician Michael Lu (UCLA School of Medicine) discusses the “life course model,” which posits that an individual’s health is determined not only by genetics and current circumstances, but by all circumstances experienced since conception (and even before). The negative physiological effects of chronic stress during pregnancy are discussed, and interviews with David Williams (Sociologist, Harvard School of Public Health), Camara Phyllis Jones (Physician and Social Epidemiologist, CDC), Nancy Krieger (Social Epidemiologist, Harvard School of Public Health), Carol Hogue (Epidemiologist, Emory University), and Fleda Jackson (Psychologist, Emory University) explore the legacy and persistence of racism against African Americans in the United States.

The episode weaves in the personal story of Kim Anderson, a well-paid African American lawyer in good health, who “did everything right,” but still delivered her first child two and a half months early.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnatural_Causes:_Is_Inequality_Making_Us_Sick%3F