The line I keep coming back to from this week opens our doula piece: Black maternal death is 2.6 times the white rate. Not new. But the second number in that piece is the one that changes how you read the first. A 2017 Cochrane review of 26 randomized trials covering 15,858 women found that continuous labor support from a trained companion lowered cesarean risk by 25 percent (PMID 28681500). Continuous labor support is what a doula does. That is the connection this publication exists to draw.
Three pieces from this week, a word on the directory, and a question at the end.
What a doula does, and why Black families are seeking them out
In 2022, Black women in the United States died from pregnancy-related causes at 49.5 per 100,000 live births, compared with 19.0 for white women, per the CDC National Center for Health Statistics. The piece walks through what the Cochrane review actually measured, what physician racial concordance did to Black newborn mortality in a PNAS analysis of 1.8 million births, how state Medicaid programs are covering doula care (26 states plus Washington, DC as of March 2026, per the NASHP Doula Medicaid Project), and how Black families can choose a doula whose training and practice fit.
Black adults develop heart failure at 39 on average, 20 years before white peers
Black Americans develop heart failure at a median age of 39. In the landmark CARDIA cohort, 26 of the 27 young adults who went into heart failure before age 50 were Black (Bibbins-Domingo et al., NEJM 2009, PMID 19297571), and 75 percent had hypertension by age 40. MESA found Black participants had roughly twice the incidence rate per 1,000 person-years versus white, 4.6 versus 2.4 (PMID 18955644). A-HeFT cut all-cause mortality 43 percent in 1,050 Black patients (PMID 15533851). The piece closes with what to ask your cardiologist if you are Black and have heart failure.
DSM-5-TR added prolonged grief disorder in 2022. Black families grieve differently.
In March 2022, the American Psychiatric Association added prolonged grief disorder to the DSM-5-TR, codifying a diagnosis for bereaved adults whose acute grief persists at least 12 months. The piece walks through why Shear's complicated grief treatment trials skew white, what Bonanno's resilience research says about bereaved adults who do not develop chronic grief, why Stroebe and Schut's dual-process model predicts what Black grief already does, and why cumulative loss is the thread the individual-focused models miss. It points readers to the Columbia Center for Prolonged Grief, the Therapy for Black Girls and Therapy for Black Men directories, and the blackhealth.org provider directory.
Directory update
We seeded nine verified providers this week across Atlanta, DC metro, Houston, and Detroit metro: five mental-health specialists, one OB-GYN, and three family medicine physicians. Each has a National Provider Identifier with active status on the federal NPI Registry. Each is still working through state-board license verification before moving to approved status. The directory page at blackhealth.org/providers is live, but every current listing reads "Unclaimed," which means we created the entry from public data and the provider has not yet confirmed their listing with us. First approvals are expected by 2026-05-01.
If you know a Black clinician who belongs here in primary care, OB-GYN, psychiatry, cardiology, pediatrics, or a specialty we are missing, nominate them, or write to hello@blackhealth.org with a name and city. Cardiology in Houston, Atlanta, or Chicago is our specific gap right now.
One question
Of the three pieces above, which would you send to someone else, and who? That is the reporting shape we lean on: what works for you often works for your family and friends. Tell us at hello@blackhealth.org. We read every note.
Until next week,
The Black Health Editorial team