By Elizabeth Llorente | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Cesarean deliveries declined slightly in New Jersey, but Black and Hispanic mothers again experienced more childbirth complications than white women, continuing a long pattern in the state, according to a newly released report.
Black women for years have had a maternal mortality rate seven times higher than white women in the state.
The New Jersey Report Card of Hospital Maternity Care, released Monday by the state Health Department and First Lady Tammy Murphy, revealed that cesarean sections accounted for 33.3% of hospital births in 2019 — the most recent data available — down from 34.4% in 2018.
New Jersey’s rate is roughly 7% higher than the national rate, according to the health department.
Racial and ethnic disparities persist, however, in childbirth and delivery.
Non-Hispanic Black mothers had the highest rate of “severe maternal morbidity” — such as aneurysm, cardiac arrest, sepsis and eclampsia — after a blood transfusion, with 35.6 per 1,000 deliveries at a hospital. Though slightly lower than in 2018, when the rate was 37.7, it was more than twice that of white mothers. White women had the lowest rate — 13.6 per 1,000 births.
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