Black newborns 3 times more likely to die when treated by white doctors, study finds
Statistics show that Black newborns in the U.S. are more likely to die than white newborns, but new research reveals a separate trend behind the staggering reality.
Black newborns are three times more likely to survive when cared for by Black physicians. But when treated by white doctors, Black newborns’ survivability drops by a third, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The findings reveal racial gaps in birth outcomes and place new questions on the table about patient-physician relationships, researchers say.
“This fact that Black newborns do so much better under the care of Black physicians warrants greater investigation by researchers and medical practitioners into drivers of differences between higher- and lower-performing physicians, and why Black physicians systemically outperform their colleagues when caring for Black newborns,” study co-author Aaron Sojourner, an associate professor in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, said in a news release.
The team analyzed 1.8 million hospital births in Florida between 1992 and 2015 and learned that Black newborns’ in-hospital death rate is a third lower when cared for by Black doctors rather than white doctors.
This trend was more strongly associated with more complicated cases, the researchers said, and in hospitals that delivered more Black babies than white ones.
A reduction in the death rate by a third “would correspond to preventing the in-hospital deaths of about 1,400 Black newborns nationally each year,” according to the team.
Over 22,000 infants died in the U.S. in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experiencing the most deaths were Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Hispanic, white and Asian babies, in that order.
The leading causes of death were birth defects, preterm birth and low birth weight, maternal pregnancy complications, sudden infant death syndrome and injuries such as suffocation.
“Our findings demonstrate that when newborns and the physicians treating them are of the same race, that newborn survival rate is significantly improved,” study co-author Rachel Hardeman, an associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, said in a news release.
“This study is the first piece of evidence that demonstrates the effect of physician-patient racial concordance on the Black-white mortality gap. As we seek to close persistent racial gaps in birth outcomes, this finding is incredibly important.”
The team said they did not find similar trends with birthing mothers. Researchers from Harvard University and George Mason University also took part in the study.
A separate paper published in July revealed that Black children were about 3.5 times more likely to die following surgery than white children, McClatchy News previously reported.
The “frequently observed racial disparity in health care outcomes” is thought to stem from poverty, lack of access to medical care and biological predisposition to underlying health conditions, which Black people face at higher rates than white people, the study said.
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 10:13 AM with the headline "Black newborns 3 times more likely to die when treated by white doctors, study finds."
