New study raises questions about the CDC’s data on the maternal mortality rate

A new study raises doubts about the high rate of maternal mortality in the U.S. that was officially reported.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

It is an unimaginable tragedy every time somebody dies after childbirth or during pregnancy. The measure of that tragedy is maternal mortality. That’s a death during pregnancy or within 42 days after delivery. Now, for years, alarm bells have rung about how high the U.S. maternal mortality rate is, but a new study has called those numbers into question. NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin joins us. Selena, thanks so much for being with us.

SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks for having me.

SIMON: What does this latest study show?

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: So this was done by a team of outside researchers from Rutgers and the University of British Columbia and other universities. They put the national maternal mortality rate at 10.4 deaths per 100,000 births. So that suggests that the rate published by CDC is three times too high. And when this outside team did their analysis, they only considered deaths where a pregnancy-related cause was mentioned on the death certificate. That’s different from the dataset CDC used, which is why the rate came out so different. And the study was peer reviewed and published Wednesday in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

SIMON: Now, this study’s getting a lot of attention because that figure has been widely cited and used over the years.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Well, exactly. I mean, NPR and other outlets have written a lot about the most recent rate from CDC, which was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 – a lot more than 10. So that’s astronomically high compared to other wealthy countries. It’s 10 times higher than the rate in Australia, Austria, Israel, Japan and Spain. That’s why that number was so widely reported on, because it was shocking. And now that this new study is putting that number much lower, it’s throwing into question what the true scale of the problem…