Hi everyone, in this video we're going to talk about disadvantaged populations and racism.

By the end of this video, you'll be able to describe disparities and birth outcomes for people of color and other disadvantaged populations.

You'll also be able to discuss systemic racism and oppression and their effects on birthing families of color.

Sadly, racial disparities exist in our society.

Black women are more likely to die in childbirth, have a preterm birth, have a low birthway

infant, lose a baby and stillbirth, and experience the death of their infant.

There are similar trends for other minority groups, although not as drastic.

And these disparities exist even after controlling for other risk factors. Why do we have these

disparities? Well, we know it's not race at the genetic level. We're all one human race. Race is a

socially constructed category. It's not education level. It's not the presence or absence

of prenatal care. It's not socioeconomic status. Researchers have controlled for all of these factors

in their studies. So if these aren't the reason we see disparities, then what is the cause?

The sad fact is that our society's racism and the chronic oppression of people of color

causes these higher death rates for families of color.

Researchers have found that chronic stress from experiencing racism and living in a racist society leads to heightened levels

of physiologic stress. The more a woman's blood pressure reacts to racist stressors in the lab,

the more likely she is to have a preterm birth. And we have seen, unfortunately, in laboratory

settings that racist stimuli do increase cardiovascular reactivity. There's also been a lot

written about the transgenerational effect of racism and epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of

changes in living organisms caused by modification of how genes are expressed rather than altering the genetic code itself.

It's thought that your grandmother's birthplace and life stressors affect several generations.

It affects her female child's future birth outcomes because that female was present as a fetus

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