Maternal health is a known crisis in the U.S., where pregnant women and new mothers die at a rate several times higher than in comparable countries. In recent years, increased awareness of the problem has led to interventions at the federal and state level and a strengthening of surveillance and data collection. Even as sizable improvements continue to be elusive, the picture of how many new mothers are dying, and why, is becoming clearer.
A research letter published on Monday in JAMA Pediatrics argues fathers deserve similar attention. To bolster their assertion, the authors reported the results of a pilot study in Georgia of deaths among fathers of children born in a single year, which found nearly 800 deaths in the first five years of fatherhood.
