Maternal Mortality 2021 Annual Report
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (Health Department) is responsible for ongoing surveillance of pregnancy-associated deaths in New York City in close collaboration with Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME). This report is responsive to Local Law 188, which requires annual reporting on population level pregnancyassociated mortality and severe maternal morbidity, and recommendations to reduce pregnancy-associated deaths1 . Data are disaggregated by information about the pregnant person where such data are available and statistically reliable.
Each year since 2001, the Health Department has conducted surveillance of pregnancy-associated deaths to develop fiveyear pregnancy associated mortality reports. The Health Department reports annual pregnancy-associated data on the NYC open data source portal and in this City Council report, which is posted on the Health Department’s website. From 2001- 2018, we have seen a statistically significant decline in the citywide pregnancy-related mortality ratio from 25.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2001-2003 to 16.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2016-2018. However, unacceptable disparities among racial/ethnic groups remain. Over this same time, the ratio of pregnancy-related mortality is on average 9.4 times higher for Black compared to White mothers. We know that disparities in health outcomes rarely occur in isolation, and communities of color in our city face differential access to power and resources such as generational wealth, access to healthy food, and access to parks and public spaces, as well as overexposure to harmful conditions such as environmental damage, over policing and disproportionate incarceration. Together these factors lead to chronic stress and disease among communities of color, which drive the health disparity in pregnancy-associated mortality across the city.
