Georgia OB-GYN urges patients, families to ‘sound the alarm’ amid Black maternal health crisis
By Ontaria Woods, Aisha Howard
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ATLANTA (WXIA) — The crisis facing Black maternal health in Georgia is driven by a stark combination of geographic shortages, systemic dismissals, and rising chronic illnesses, according to local medical experts.
“For Black women, the cause is multifactorial,” said Dr. Crystal Welch, a local OB-GYN at Oasis Women’s Wellness Center.
In Georgia, one of the steepest hurdles is the rapid expansion of “care deserts,” defined as vast geographic areas where medical infrastructure is entirely lacking.
Dr. Welch noted there is often “no access to good maternity care for miles, sometimes 45, 60 miles between hospitals that can care for maternities.”
But reaching a hospital is only half the battle. Once there, Black women frequently face a system that fails to support them.
“Sometimes they’re not listened to,” Dr. Welch said. “Sometimes they don’t know how to advocate for themselves.”
Compounding these systemic hurdles is a rise in underlying medical conditions.
“They are facing higher comorbidities that also can complicate their pregnancy outcomes,” Dr. Welch explained.
Chief among those complications is preeclampsia, a serious blood pressure disorder that she warns is “getting more and more common amongst Black women and Hispanic women.”
To protect patients, Dr. Welch counsels women and their families to look out for critical red flags, including “headaches that do not resolve if you take any type of pain medicine like Tylenol,” blurry vision, pain in the upper right side of the belly, and “any non-dependent edema, meaning swelling in your face or your hands.”
To move the needle on maternal mortality, Dr. Welch is calling for widespread education and standardized hospital protocols, particularly at facilities that are not traditionally equipped for birth.
“Once they get to these healthcare systems, if they’re not maternity equipped, to just know protocols,” Dr. Welch said.
She urged facilities to adopt clear guidelines that dictate: “If a woman presents with this, this is what you should be looking for, this is what you should be evaluating for, and this is how you would treat it and getting her to the proper places that she needs to be.”
For an expectant mother, questioning a doctor can feel intimidating.
“You feel so small,” Dr. Welch acknowledged, but she stressed that finding a trusted provider is a critical first step.
“It’s more important for you to find a doctor that you can talk to that you feel comfortable with, that if you say something to them, you know they’re going to listen. If you see that’s not who your doctor is, you should change doctors.”
Because a laboring patient may be too overwhelmed to fight for herself, family members and partners must step up as primary defenders.
“You can speak up for this patient as well,” Dr. Welch advises partners. “If she’s saying, ‘My head’s been hurting for two days,’ and I said that but they didn’t hear me, you say, ‘Hey, she is complaining of a headache that has not gone away. Can we get a little bit more?”
If immediate providers shrug off those concerns, Dr. Welch says families must remain persistent.
“There are always other people you can ask. There are managers on the units, there are managers in office, there are other doctors, they’re mid-levels, there are different people that you can just keep asking and persisting to listen to you.”
While national attention spikes annually during Black Maternal Health Week in mid-April, local providers emphasize that addressing these systemic disparities requires a year-round commitment.
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