Assistant Professor Abimbola Ayorinde, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, said:

“The tragic death of Tori Bowie is another call for more to be done to tackle the high rate of maternal morbidity and mortality among Black women. As highlighted by Allyson Felix, three out of four American team-mates at the Rio 2016 Olympics either died or nearly died due to pregnancy. There are other high-profile Black women with similar stories. These are examples of how the risk goes beyond socioeconomic class. The racial inequities in maternal health is a global issue. In the United States of America, the risk of maternal death is 2.6 times higher for Black women than for White women. The gap is even wider in the United Kingdom (UK) with Black women having about almost four times higher risk than White women (MBRRACE-UK 2023). Our recent work showed that in over 40 years not much has been done in the UK to tackle the issue (Esan et al. 2022). Most of the work so far focussed on physiological and sociodemographic issues. While these are very important, the issue of racial inequities in maternal health is multifactorial. There is a need to examine potential issues in the quality of care Black women receive and identify ways to optimise these (Ayorinde et al., 2023). We need to tackle racial inequity at all levels; patient, provider, microsystems, organisation, community, and policy in order to be able to make meaningful changes that would propel us in the right direction.”

MBRRACE-UK. Maternal mortality 2019-2021. 2023. https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/mbrrace-uk/data-brief/maternal-mortality-2019-2021

Esan O, Adjei N, Saberian S, Christianson L, et al. Mapping existing policy interventions to tackle ethnic health inequalities in maternal and neonatal health in England: A systematic scoping review with stakeholder engagement. 2022. https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3166498/1/RHO%20Mapping%20existing%20policy%20interventions_December%202022%20%281%29.pdf

Ayorinde A, Esan O B, Buabeng R, Taylor B, Salway S. Ethnic inequities in maternal health BMJ 2023; 381 :p1040 doi:10.1136/bmj.p1040