As reported in The Guardian, an academic study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has arrived at some startling findings. It suggests that black babies in the USA have a greater chance of survival if the hospital doctor in charge of their care is also black.
The Guardian reports on the study findings: “When cared for by white doctors, black babies are about three times more likely to die in the hospital than white newborns. This disparity halves when black babies are cared for by a black doctor”.
The researchers arrived at their findings after reviewing 1.8m hospital birth records in Florida from 1992 to 2015 and establishing the ethnicities of the doctors placed in their charge.
“Structural and societal racism, toxic stress and cumulative socioeconomic disadvantages” and the “race of the attending doctor” appear to play “an important role” in determining the life chances of the babies, The Guardian concluded.
This study comes just a year after the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published equally disturbing findings: Black babies were more than twice as likely to die before reaching their first birthday than white babies. This was regardless of the mother’s education level or income level.
“Unconscious racism among white doctors towards black women and their babies may also be at play. For white newborns, the race of their doctor makes little difference to their chances of survival”, The Guardian reported.
It is worth pointing out that the USA is ranked as low as 30th among the 33 OECD countries for infant mortality. Only Mexico, Turkey and Chile fared worse in this ranking.
According to the CDC, as reported in The Guardian, “over 22,000 American babies died before their first birthday in 2017. Black babies died at a rate of 10.97 per 1,000 births – more than twice the rate for white, Asian or Latin newborns” in a state where only five percent of doctors are black.