{"id":54216,"date":"2025-11-18T08:01:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T08:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/54216\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T08:01:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T08:01:14","slug":"texas-gets-d-rating-in-maternal-infant-health-report-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/54216\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas gets ‘D’ rating in maternal, infant health report card"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas received a grade of \u201cD\u201d in the annual report card<\/a> on maternal and infant health outcomes from the national nonprofit March of Dimes.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s low rating reflects its high pre-term birthrate: 11.1% of babies in Texas were born prematurely in 2024, a trend that remained flat from 2023. The United States, which earned a D-plus overall, saw a 10.4% pre-term birth rate.<\/p>\n

March of Dimes announced a targeted effort to improve Texas’ pre-term birth rate<\/a> earlier this month. Pre-term births are associated with higher infant mortality rates, developmental delays and other health risks. <\/p>\n

In Texas, there was disparity between different demographics within this metric. White and Asian mothers, for instance, saw rates below 10%, whereas Black mothers experienced pre-term birth rates of nearly 15%. The infant mortality rate was also significantly higher for babies born to Black moms.<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas is not alone there,\u201d said Dr. Michael Warren, chief medical and health officer for March of Dimes. \u201cWomen of color tend to have worse birth outcomes than non-Hispanic white women, and that is true even when you control for other factors like education and income.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warren said research was needed to understand how discrimination in prenatal and maternal care could be contributing to these disparities. <\/p>\n

The report card also showed that nearly 23% of Texas mothers did not receive prenatal care until the fifth month of pregnancy, compared with 16% nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re really missing out on those important opportunities to make sure that mom is healthy, that the growing baby is healthy, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that they\u2019re going to have a good outcome for that pregnancy,\u201d Warren said.<\/p>\n

However, Texas did perform better than the national average for severe maternal morbidity outcomes, meaning mothers in the state saw fewer long- or short-term health consequences associated with labor and delivery. Warren said Texas\u2019 move in 2023 to extend Medicaid coverage<\/a> for mothers for a year after delivery was a positive step.<\/p>\n

Travis County fared better in the March of Dimes report compared with the state as a whole with a grade of C-plus and a 9.5% pre-term birth rate. However, that represented a slight increase from the previous year.<\/p>\n

Support for KUT’s reporting on health news comes from St. David\u2019s Foundation<\/a>. Sponsors do not influence KUT’s editorial decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas received a grade of \u201cD\u201d in the annual report card on maternal and infant health outcomes from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6166,29933,29934,29935,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-54216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-march-of-dimes","tag-pre-term-labor","tag-preterm-labor","tag-report-card","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}