ADPH hopes new program provides greater insight into cause of maternal deaths

Archie Snowden
·2 min read
5

ALABAMA (WHNT) – The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) hopes a new maternal autopsy program will help gain insight into the high number of maternal deaths in the state.

Alabama’s maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the nation. That fact alarmed the ADPH, and let the department know it had to do something.

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The Alabama Maternal Mortality Review Committee took a deeper dive and started reviewing deaths from 2018 and 2019, in an attempt to figure out what the causes were for the state’s high rates.

Carolyn Miller, ADPH State Paranotal Director, and the review team looked at 93 deaths in that span that seem to fit the parameters of their study, and they determined that 24 of the deaths were pregnancy-related. The committee also found a large number of maternal deaths in Alabama do not have an autopsy performed.

“Unfortunately, at least 50% of the deaths we looked at have no autopsy,” said Carolyn Miller, ADPH State Paranotal Director.

Most women lived in rural Alabama.

“We tried to get as many records as we could,” said Miller. “We get medical records, hospital records, case management and sometimes police records depending on the circumstances of the death, and the more information we have the better we can determine what went on so that we can prevent it in the future.”

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Through the implementation of the Maternal Autopsy Program, family members of women who died during pregnancy or up to a year after delivery are offered a complete autopsy, free of charge if there is no one to perform the autopsy in the area, or they cannot afford one.

“We have a lack of access to care in our state,” Miller explained. “Many of our rural counties do not have an OBGYN to see, nor do they have a labor and delivery hospital. We had 3 hospitals labor and delivery services close last year.”

With that in mind, coroners in Baldwin, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Mobile, Montgomery, Shelby, and Walker counties announced their participation in the maternal autopsy program.

ADPH said it plans to expand the availability of the maternal autopsy program statewide in the coming months.

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