Pregnant women all across New Mexico are facing similar dilemmas. In the last decade, six hospitals around the state have closed their maternity wards and at least three clinics have been forced to close or severely reduce operations, due to financial stress, staff shortages or other causes.

In an emotional hearing, Sunshine Muse, the executive director of the New Mexico Birth Equity Collaborative told the committee of the trauma many native and black women are going through having to grow up without a mother.

Yolanda Cruz speaks with Sunshine Muse from Black Health New Mexico, on February's installment of Community Matters.

A New Mexico couple leans on a nearby midwife to help overcome their limited resources to experience a healthy home birth based on their values. Produced by Every Mother Counts.

Watch the broadcast

(Source: CNN)

When pregnant women experience discrimination and stress, their babies do, too. This could help explain disturbing racial inequities in maternal and infant health here.

The more stressful the pregnancy, the higher the risk for something to go wrong. Babies born in New Mexico to African-American mothers die at a rate three times higher than White newborns. These numbers are mirrored in national statistics.

More recent studies have pinned higher rates of infant mortality and black mothers' deaths on environmental factors like barriers to health care and racism-induced stress. Across the country, in response to a growing rate of infant mortality and pregnancy-related deaths among black mothers, reproductive advocates are working with local health providers and getting the word out to mothers who could benefit from prenatal services that research shows lead to healthier birth outcomes.

If you are outraged by the maternal health crisis—and you should be—where black women are dying disproportionately from preventable childbirth-related causes and mistreatment, here’s what you can do: Get Involved.

Current data indicates that black women have the lowest rates of breastfeeding in the US. There are many reasons for this, including lack of access to resources, substandard healthcare, personal choice and historical trauma. But what is not true however, are popular myths that black women do not know how to breastfeed, have not been exposed to breastfeeding or do not value it for our children.

Public health is the leading field for addressing health challenges in our country and ultimately the world. Nurses, doctors, midwives, medical assistants, activists, advocates, researchers, and policy makers are directly involved in, or turn to, public health work—which includes but is not limited to research, disease prevention, and community education to improve health across populations.