Black babies are more likely to die when cared for by white doctors, new study shows

Racism has long proven to be as deadly as it is disheartening, and a new study published Monday indicates that newborn babies aren’t exempt from the dire effects of the long-practiced hatred. Black babies are more likely to die when white doctors are in charge of their care than when Black doctors care for them, researchers wrote in the study. And in fact, “Black infants experience inferior health outcomes regardless of who is treating them,” due to other racial disparities affecting their mothers.

The new findings simply point to what experts have long indicated, whether in regard to education or crime prevention: Black people, and in this case, Black newborns have different needs that other Black people are often better suited to meet.

“Findings suggest that when Black newborns are cared for by Black physicians, the mortality penalty they suffer, as compared with White infants, is halved,” researchers wrote in the study. “Strikingly, these effects appear to manifest more strongly in more complicated cases, and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns.”

Researchers attribute those different needs “to social risk factors and cumulative racial and socioeconomic disadvantages of Black pregnant women.” They wrote: “To the extent that physicians of a social outgroup are more likely to be aware of the challenges and issues that arise when treating their group (...), it stands to reason that these physicians may be more equipped to treat patients with complex needs.”

The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based on 1.8 million hospital birth records from 1992 to 2015 in Florida. The findings seem to align with research the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published last year that shows Black babies are two times more likely than white babies to die before turning 1 year old, despite the mother’s income or education level. “The reasons behind these disparities range from increased rates of eclampsia and preeclampsia during pregnancy to preterm delivery, to social determinants like socioeconomic inequality and racial bias,” authors of the new study wrote, citing other research.

”These results underscore the need for research into drivers of differences between high- and low-performing physicians, and why Black physicians systemically outperform their colleagues when caring for Black newborns,” researchers wrote.

It’s an alarming need when considering just how many aspiring Black doctors have been shut out of the medical field. Only 5% of doctors identify as Black compared to 56% who identify as white, 17% who identify as Asian, and just less than 6% who identify as Latino, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

”Financial constraints, insufficient exposure to medicine as a career, little encouragement at home and in schools, lack of role models, and negative peer pressure may contribute to racial disparities in the physician workforce for African Americans,” researchers said in another study published in the Journal of the National Medical Association. “Exposure at a young age to role models and to medicine as a profession might increase the number of African American physicians.”

Dr. Arthur James, a Black man and a retired obstetrician and gynecologist, told The Guardian racial concordance is “an important and often overlooked potential contributor to improved birth outcomes.” James was contracted to care for uninsured patients in eastern Michigan in the 1980s, when Black babies were five times more likely to die than white babies, according to The Guardian.

“As black physicians, we attended the same churches, barbershops, beauty salons, our children attended the same schools …” he said. “This sense of community cultivates an entirely different level of relationship and accountability. The feeling that your provider genuinely cared for you is important … and, in my opinion, is more easily realized when racial concordance and genuine relationship is present.”

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