What's behind the high black infant mortality rates? Racism, not race
This project received support from the Center for Health Journalism's California Fellowship and its Fund for Journalism on Child Well-being.
Other stories in the series include:
How one reporter made an old statistic about Black infant mortality new and urgent
Black babies die at twice the rate of white babies. My family is part of this statistic
America's black babies are paying for society's ills. What will we do to fix it?
Saving black babies by saving a whole neighborhood
Why are black babies twice as likely to die as white babies in the US?
Empowering moms – and dads – in the black infant mortality crisis
Moving from talk to action on black infant mortality plan
Residents say the neighborhood of Castlemont in Oakland has been historically underserved and under-resourced. It's part of the Best Babies Zone initiative, part of a national initiative which aim to change that. Priska Neely/KPCC
Black babies in the the United States are twice as likely to die before their first birthdays as white babies. This alarming statistic is not new. That gap in birth outcomes has persisted for decades. As KPCC’s Priska Neely reports, one of the reasons it’s hard to change: systemic racism is at the heart of the issue.
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[This story was originally published by KPCC.]