Maternal health crisis in the United States

(CNN / KYMA, KECY) - The United States' high maternal death rate makes it an outlier among developed nations.

Each year, hundreds of American women die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth.

Experts have expressed concern the problem is getting worse.

A new study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology challenges the scale of the U.S. maternal health crisis.

It suggests that reliance on a pregnancy checkbox on death certificates may have led to an over-estimation of maternal deaths.

All 50 states have had the “pregnancy checkbox” on death certificates since 2018 in order to indicate whether a deceased woman was pregnant at or around her time of death.

Researchers involved in the new study say the checkbox does not indicate whether the pregnancy had anything to do with the woman's death.

Therefore, maternal death rates in the U.S. may actually be lower and more stable than federal data suggests.

Experts say clarifying the purpose of the checkbox in a more direct way could help improve the quality of data collection.