Dr. Anna Casey is a data scientist at Cape Fear Collective, a Wilmington-based nonprofit that uses data analytics to help map and address issues of social inequality.
She told WHQR that while New Hanover County looks great on paper (tied for second-lowest overall infant mortality rate among 59 NC counties), the local Black-White health disparities are actually worse than the state average on 11 different metrics she examined.
Those were: infant mortality, low birth weight, very low birth weight, c-section rate, pre-pregnancy and gestational hypertension, pre-pregnancy obesity, smoking during pregnancy, teen births, unmarried, 1st trimester prenatal care, and births to mothers with a bachelor’s degree.
Related: “There are people who will listen.” Making inroads to Black maternal health outcomes
Casey pulled statistics and found that, “about half of New Hanover County Black mothers begin care in the first trimester (55%), while it's about two-thirds statewide (66%),” she said.
Additionally, Casey said that in New Hanover County, Black teenagers are 8.4 times more likely to get pregnant than their White peers. At the state level, the ratio is lower, with Black teenagers roughly twice as likely to become pregnant.
And in the county, Casey added that New Hanover’s overall low birth-weight rate sits right at the state average, but upon closer inspection, the Black-White ratio is 2.3 times the state average, ranking 11th among 65 counties for the widest disparity.
Since Casey said that infant and maternal deaths are relatively rare, they have to pull statistics over a five-year span to avoid anomalies and statistical noise. But from 2019 to 2023, Black infants died at three times the rate of White babies. This is slightly lower than the state’s rate of 2.7 times.
She adds that while data scientists run the numbers, from the literature on this disparity issue, she knows, “A lot of different structural factors feed into this. There's stigmatization from healthcare professionals that sometimes makes people avoid or be afraid to get care. There are obviously structural issues around where hospitals are and who has access to insurance, for example, but then also just things like education level, socioeconomics.”
Casey also said that the county’s White population has better-than-average outcomes, which raises the overall average for maternal-infant metrics.
