Margaret Battersby Black Speaks on WVON Radio – Racial Disparities in Infant and Maternal Mortality

Black maternal and infant mortality death continues to be an issue in this country. Um, it is in some cases, it is not safe for a black woman to have a child depending upon you know where she is, in several ways. And the unfortunate part about that is it doesn’t even matter. Uh so economic class doesn’t even matter whether you could be Serena Williams literally or you could or you could be someone of meager means it’s it’s still an issue. But there are people out here fighting the good fight concerning that. And on the live line we have one of them attorney Margaret Battersby Black. She’s a managing partner at Levin and Percanti and one of the leading birth injury lawyers in the United States who has successfully represented many black families.

All right.

And and she just secured a huge settlement. And we’re here to talk about not just the settlement per se, but really what she sees from an attorney’s point of view of what seems to be persistent problems in the health care system for black mothers and black infants. Thank you so much for joining us, Attorney Black. How are you?

Good. How are you?

Excellent. Excellent. So, please let give us an idea um from your perspective of how pervasive this issue is.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think it’s first important to say that these disparities in the way that black mothers and babies are treated versus white mothers and babies are not about biology. Um, it’s not about black women’s bodies that are the problem. The problem is the system. And across the country and even here in Illinois, black women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. And their babies are more likely to suffer preventable birth injuries like oxygen deprivation or cerebral palsy. And so what I really see, you know, is when those things happen, they come to me to say, “Hey, is this supposed to happen or are there things that should have been done differently?” Um, which, you know, I can speak to because we just had this recent case involving a firsttime black mother delivering at the hospital closest to her home. And that’s one of the, you know, one of, I think, one of the causes here is that a lot of times, um, first of all, there are unequal hospital resources and many of the predominantly black serving hospitals have higher complications rates and fewer staff. Second, you know, there’s implicit bias. and and whether people realize it or not, there are studies that show that black women’s concerns are more often dismissed or minimized in medical settings. Um, but this case is interesting because in this case, um, it wasn’t the mom who was telling the medical providers that something was going wrong. It was the baby. Um, so my client was 39 weeks and her prenatal care had been going really well. Um, she was told to expect nothing but a healthy baby, but on her last visit to her doctor’s office before um she was going to deliver. She had a checkup and the ultrasound showed that the baby was measuring on the smaller side even though he was fullterm. So they decided correctly to send her to the hospital and induce her delivery because everybody knows that smaller babies sometimes have a more difficult time withstanding stress during labor. And so when she got to the hospital, she was hooked up to a fetal monitoring system that could read the pattern of the baby’s heart rate to show if he was doing well. And when she arrived, the baby looked great. the baby was telling, you know, the doctors and nurses that he was okay. Um, so the birthing process, as you may know, is stressful to begin with. When you hear the term contractions, that refers to the baby being squeezed by muscles through the birth canal. And so naturally during that process, there are times when the baby is squeezed and there may be some decreased blood flow.

Mhm.

But babies have reserves of oxygen so they can withstand this kind of normal natural process. Um but that’s why we have the monitoring. Uh and so when you’re monitoring moms in labor, the health care providers are supposed to be looking at two things. One, how is the baby tolerating the labor? And two, how is mom progressing? Is this going to be a long labor or a short labor? And they’ve got to make sure that the baby is tolerating the labor well enough to get through the labor and be delivered. Um, and what my client didn’t know, but you know what what the lawyers and the medical providers know is that when smaller babies are in the labor process, they may not be able to withstand it and tolerate it as long. And my client trusted the nurses and the doctors to monitor the baby. But what we learned in our investigation was that the baby was showing for hours before delivery signs that he could not tolerate the labor, that he was losing his oxygen reserves, and that his brain was at risk for being injured. And our client can’t see that happening because she doesn’t know how to read the monitor that’s next to the bed. It looks like kind of one of those squiggly lines.

Mhm.

So, you know, even if she wanted to be her own advocate, she couldn’t be. Um, and the baby was telling everyone, you know, I need to be delivered. And so, in that case, unfortunately, he did not get delivered in time. And by the time they did realize that he needed to

come out by a cescareian section because he was not going to be able to be delivered um by his mom, he was born with severe brain damage. and yeah, he’s now disabled for the rest of his life. Um, and so, you know, you never want to have to deal with that. But what our law firm did is we took it to the citizens of Cook County and made the case that the healthc care provider should have been listening to the baby and should have delivered him sooner. And the jury awarded $20 million, which will allow his mom to provide lifelong care for him. And so, you know, it’s a sad story, but he can finally now get the much-needed resources to hopefully thrive to the best of his ability.

You know, what’s really sad about this is I’ve had four children, and I knew none of this. I mean, I did not know that the monitoring tells the doctor that my child is healthy. You don’t think about I don’t, I wasn’t, I was not privy to this information. I wouldn’t know what questions to ask to even begin to advocate for myself. So, what advice do you give for mothers, expectant mothers, to just even have a readiness of questions to ask their doctor, their healthcare provider, uh, when it comes to being able to deliver a healthy baby, or what signs to look for?

Well, I think there are two questions there. I can speak to the signs in a minute, but the first thing is to ask questions and sometimes people feel kind of this barrier. Um, you know, they’re going to a hospital or a doctor because of their expertise. Um, but, you know, ask questions.  What can I expect? What are you hooking me up to? What, you know, what do I need to report to you? Um, you know, we’ve got tons of cases that come in where even if moms are told what to report, sometimes the reports aren’t taken seriously. And to be your own advocate. Um, every time someone comes into the room, ask them what they’re doing. Ask them what they’re looking at. Ask them what that means. Um, you know, be on the lookout for signs and symptoms. I

mean, you know, they quite literally have alarms um that ring when the baby’s heart rates, you know, dip. Why are those alarms going off? Um, do you have any concerns? You know, ask what terms mean? And and I understand people can be timid because you trust your doctors and you assume that, you know, they’re going to let you know if there’s a concern, but just ask what those terms mean. Ask them to explain it to you. Um, definitely have, you know, a friend or a family member, um, who can kind of be your advocate because when

you’re in a hospital, you’re not thinking necessarily, right? And as you said, you’ve been through four labors and deliveries. So, you know, you’re definitely not in the right mindset to be asking questions there. So, educate yourself before you get there. Um, and and most importantly, when you feel, you know, something isn’t right, you’ve got to speak up. Yeah. Because there is this thing called mother’s intuition. And you know, I mean, there’s a lot of my clients will come to me and say, “God, you know, I just had this feeling that something wasn’t right, but who am I to question the doctors and the nurses?” And, you know, I’ll tell you, I don’t think that a lot of people go into the medical field um because they want to mistreat people. I don’t think that’s their intention, but you know, the system is kind of unfortunate that a lot of times there’s not enough staff, there’s not enough time. Um, and you know, things happen at busy hospitals.

Attorney Margaret, I just want to make sure that we get you on the other side of this break. Um, we’re going to have to take uh traffic and weather real quick and when we come back, we want to find out what changes have been made to prevent something like this, if any. We’ll see you guys when we get back.

We are joined on the live line by attorney Margaret Battersby Black, managing partner at Levin and Perconti. And she has been walking us through a better understanding, a thorough understanding, of the issues with health care as it pertains to maternal black maternal care as well as infant care. Her firm has helped tons of black mothers. And it’s just a sad I mean I’m glad that someone like you and your firm exists attorney but man I’ll be glad when the day comes that you don’t have to.

I like that.

I hear you.

Well before the break you had asked me you know what what things had been enacted or what things had been done to address this. I think you know, unfortunately not enough. Um but you know, awareness is the first step. So, you know, it’s only recently that this has kind of come to the forefront and on the heels of some CDC reporting about the fact that um there’s this large disparity in healthcare, um Senator Corey Booker, who’s a Democratic senator out of New Jersey, introduced something into Congress called the Black Maternal Health Nibus Act. um which you know is kind of a little pun there, but the purpose of it was to end preventable maternal mortality um and mental maternal health disparities in the United States. And of course, you know, that that bill um still sits in committee. So, you know, one of the things that we as citizens can do is encourage more action on that. Um studies show as well that just educating the staff um on this concept of implicit bias and to kind of you know particularly be attuned to it um and do some kind of racial sensitivity training uh could improve outcomes. Um also studies have shown that people of color are more likely to do better with black doctors or people of color. So encouraging uh people to enter uh the medical profession, nurses and doctors. Um there has been an expansion of Medicaid coverage for postpartum care for moms where it used to be 60 days, it’s now a year. Um so preserving that and making sure that moms still have access to that because you know for maternal morbidity where moms are dying as a result of pregnancy-related diseases 60% of those happen postpartum. um you know due to not getting follow-up care or not having conditions diagnosed as quickly as they need to be. Is that a result of not going or being proactive in getting that post care versus uh versus being proactive in maintaining that post care. I think it could be a combination. I mean, as you know, the period after you have a newborn is so stressful, and you’re worried first about this new life you’ve brought into the world and making sure that he or she has, you know, all of the right um things and basically is living, right? You got to keep them alive. You got to feed them. You got to make sure their diapers are changed. And so, it’s a really stressful time for moms. And I think a lot of time, they put their needs second. Um, but I also think it goes to this kind of bias where sometimes when black women are complaining about things, they’re not taken as seriously and their voices are not heard um by doctors. You know, they’re dismissed more easily. And so, you know, yeah, you’ve got to be proactive and you’ve got to be an advocate. And, you know, the biggest thing is if you think something isn’t right, you know, keep fighting and go in and, you know, get looked at. if you have to go to the emergency room, you know, to to get some kind of attention, do it. Because a lot of times, you know, we’ve all been on the phone with doctors or medical providers where we’re telling them, you know, things that we’re feeling and of course deep inside ourselves, we want it to be okay. Um, so when they’re telling us, well, this is normal, um, you know, there’s a tendency to say like, okay. But, you know, things that people need to look out for, you know, bleeding for moms in the postpartum period, bleeding, shortness of breath, um you know, infection, signs of infection, temperature, um you know, those kinds of things because those are red flags. Those can lead to catastrophic, you know, consequences.

Exactly. Well, attorney Margaret Battersby Black, thank you so much for joining us today for this incredible work that you’re doing to fight for the families who deserve justice. Tell us uh real quick how people can get in touch with your law firm.

Yes. So my law firm is Levin and Perconti, and you can just Google me or my firm and uh my email is right there, but my email address is mpb@levinperconti.com, and you can call us at 3123322872. So thank you so much for having me.

Of course. Thank you.

Thank you so much. We appreciate the work that you do.

Thank you.

I wish we didn’t need an attorney like that because it is so it’s such an ugly thing, but for those of you that heard everything that was said today, make sure that you ask those questions because I guess I wasn’t courageous enough to do it. Make sure you look out for what could be and what is about to be cuz it’s a lifelong commitment, guys. Being black ain’t easy right here on WBO. Absolutely worth it. I love it. Yes.