African-Americans Infant Mortality

Running Head: AFRICAN-AMERICANS INFANT MORTALITY 1
African-Americans Infant Mortality
Author’s Name
Institution
Date

AFRICAN-AMERICANS INFANT MORTALITY 2
Infant Death Among African-Americans
Infant mortality refers to the demise of the newborn before coming to see the first
birthday. Accordingly, the newborn death rate is the number of infant losses for every 1000
living deliveries. On the other hand, the vulnerable population is those individuals that are at a
disadvantage in the society such as diverse racial minorities (Hummer, Powers, Pullum,
Gossman & Frisbie, 2012). Majority of the minorities usually suffer from poverty, poor lifestyle,
living conditions, food among other factors. In that case, infant mortality is right linked to these
reasons since the newborns are usually susceptible to their living environments and most of the
newborns in poor families are at higher danger of SIDS than those in a staple class family
(Schoendorf, Hogue, Kleinman & Rowley, 2015).
The vulnerable population that I chose to discuss on is African Americans, and the health
problem of my interest was Infant mortality. The black population is the largest of the numerous
ethnic and racial groups that are found within the United States who are mostly of African origin,
however, there are other black individuals who do not have black ancestors. They are the
descendants of slaves who were forced to work in America and hade limited rights. Most of the
blacks live in the city of New York while others in Chicago and Detroit (Schoendorf et al.
2015). In this article, I will discuss many issues that revolve around infant mortality among
African-Americans. These include; Reasons for newborn death amongst African-Americans such
as Poverty, low socioeconomic status, prenatal care and physical health, how social injustice is
experienced by African-Americans, Rawls mature theory of social justice. Finally, I will provide
my proposal on a macro-level intervention recommendation to mortality among African-
Americans as justified by literature review.
Reasons for Infant Mortality Among African-Americans

AFRICAN-AMERICANS INFANT MORTALITY 3
Infant motility in America is due to the racial division which usually begins during birth
due to many disparities in the healthcare sector. Blacks have very high infant mortality rates as
compared to other ethnic or racial groups in America (Chay & Greenstone, 2013). The gap
continues to widen, for instance, African-Americans had the highest infant death rates in the
United States of America during the 2002-2004 period. These statistics show that almost
fourteen black infants died for every one thousand births. The African Americans are vulnerable
to Infant mortality because of so many factors. These factors include; shortage of resources and
low social and economic levels, prenatal attention and physical well-being among the blacks
(Schoendorf et al. 2015).
Other minor reasons for infant mortality among the African-American population are
mother’s age, poor nutrition, and birthweight related issues (McCormick, 2015). These factors
will significantly affect the future economic as well as social paths of the newborns which lead to
increased infant mortality among the African-Americans population. There are many
improvements that have been made in the effort to reduce infant mortality among this population
but colored children are almost three folds more probable to pass away early before their first
anniversary than white babies. This problem is escalating due to the above factors which lead to
increased infant mortality among the African-Americans population (Schoendorf et al. 2015).
Poverty And Low Socioeconomic Status Among African-Americans
Majority of black women are usually at a greater danger for parental and newborn death
that is after controlling for education and socioeconomic (Schoendorf et al. 2015). Furthermore,
regulatory influences displayed that the college-educated black females of African descent were
three times more probable to lose their newborns as compared to the non-Hispanic white peers
(Coutinho, David & Collins, 2016).