Centering equity: Addressing structural and social determinants of health to improve maternal and infant health outcomes.

ABSTRACT

Despite decades of investment and improvements in infant health in the United States, efforts to ensure the health and well-being of birthing people, especially those from racialized and minoritized communities, have been underfunded and neglected. As a result, many birthing people do not have access to the quality care they deserve and suffer disproportionately from adverse health outcomes such as severe maternal morbidity and maternal mortality. Through a Reproductive Justice lens, this paper will discuss structural causes for maternal health disparities as well as some of the structural solutions necessary to support the correction of centuries of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, and other minoritized identities.