Editorial: Time to recognize role of racism in infant mortality
The Columbus Dispatch
The mid-December news from the Ohio Department of Health was discouraging: Following years of effort to reduce the rate of infant mortality, new numbers showed that not only did the overall rate remain unchanged, the rate at which Black babies died before their first birthdays actually rose.
In fact, if one considers only white babies, says Democratic State Rep. Emilia Sykes of Akron, the state long ago surpassed the widely shared goal of, by 2020, losing no more than six babies per 1,000 live births in a year. But the mortality rate for Black babies in Ohio in 2019 was 14.3 per 1,000 live births – up from 13.9 in 2018 and nearly triple the 5.1 rate for white babies. The overall rate for 2019 is 6.9, the same as 2018.