Black U.S. Babies Still More Likely To Die Than White Infants

(Reuters Health) - Even as infant mortality rates are declining nationwide, there are some U.S. states where black babies are much more likely to die than white infants, a recent study suggests. Overall, infant mortality rates decreased 13 percent in the U.S. from 2000 to 2013, the study found. By the end of this period, however, the black infant mortality rate was 11.1 deaths for every 1,000 live births, compared with just 5.1 deaths for every 1,000 white newborns. The rate is calculated based on the number of babies who die before their first birthday. Eliminating this gap would have saved almost 65,000 black babies during the study period, the researchers estimate in the American Journal of Public Health. “I’d like to see racial equality in infant survival in my lifetime, and some states are on the right track,” lead study author Dr. Joedrecka Brown Speights of Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee said by email. For the study, researchers used government records to calculate infant mortality rates in 35 states; some states had too few deaths to analyze meaningful differences between the groups of babies. By the end of the study, state-level black infant mortality rates ranged from 6.65 to 13.77 deaths for every 1,000 live births. All states improved infant mortality rates for black babies during the study period, though none achieved equality. The three states with the biggest improvements were Arizona, Iowa and Massachusetts, which...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news