CDC Overestimating Maternal Death Rates in America, Study Finds

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) overestimates the number of maternal deaths in the United States due to adding numbers not related to pregnancy into the data, according to a recent study.

The study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology on March 12, aimed to assess the causes behind the elevated maternal mortality rates in the United States. When women die during pregnancy, childbirth, or shortly after delivery from conditions directly related to pregnancy, they are classified as maternal deaths.

By contrast, unrelated deaths are not linked to any of these events. Researchers found that unrelated deaths were being included in the maternal death data, thus inflating mortality rate in this group.

In their analysis, researchers looked at maternal mortality data in two ways. They first examined maternal death numbers from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), which is the official maternal death data. In the second method, researchers restricted maternal death figures to only those cases where pregnancy was listed as a cause of death on death certificates.

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