Sepsis rates much higher for Black moms in Mississippi, analysis finds
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Sepsis rates much higher for Black moms in Mississippi, analysis finds
Sepsis rates much higher for Black moms in Mississippi, analysis finds
Sarah Boden47 minutes ago.
Public Health
Sepsis
Black moms in Mississippi are more than twice as likely to develop sepsis after giving birth than White mothers, according to an analysis published yesterday in JAMA Network Open.
Maternal sepsis, the third most common cause of maternal death globally, occurs when an overactive immune response to infection during pregnancy, or after childbirth or abortion, causes the body to attack its own organs and tissues.
As Mississippi consistently ranks as having one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the United States, researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center wanted to understand how prevalent sepsis was among birthing parents in the state.
Using hospital discharge data from 2016 through 2025, the authors identified 197 sepsis cases among 320,179 hospital births during that period. They found an overall sepsis rate of 6.2 cases per 10,000 births. But for Black moms, it was 8.6 per 10,000 births; with White mothers, it was 4.2.
Among the 77 pregnancy-related deaths occurring in Mississippi from 2017 to 2021, 60 of these women, or 77.9%, were Black, according to an April 2025 report from the Mississippi State Department of Health.
Race, Medicaid insurance, cesarean delivery are risk factors
In addition to race being a risk factor, the study also found that sepsis was more common among those who are insured through Medicaid, a publicly funded insurance program for low-income people. The sepsis rate for moms on Medicaid was 7.5 cases per 10,000. It dropped to 4.3 cases per 10,000 births if the mother had private insurance.The highest year for maternal sepsis was 2021, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which Mississippi saw 7.8 cases per 10,000 births. Five of the 11 sepsis-associated maternal deaths identified during the study period had COVID.
Delivering a baby through a cesarean section, a surgical procedure in which an incision is made through the abdomen and uterus, was one of the biggest risk factors for sepsis identified by the study.
Overall, the rate for sepsis among these births was 10 per 10,000, though the cesarean birth rate among Black mothers with sepsis was 13.7. It was just 6.4 per 10,000 births for White mothers.
For this reason, the authors say that proactive maternal care should target Mississippi's surgical birth rate. At 37.9%, Mississippi leads the country in cesarean deliveries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because of the study’s design, however, the authors said they were unable to determine whether the high number of cesarean births in Mississippi is caused by sepsis or the other way around, or if other factors, such as chronic health complications like obesity and hypertension, are driving these adverse outcomes.
But they suggest those factors are likely playing a role.
“To address the entire spectrum of risk factors for sepsis and maternal deaths, Mississippi must intensify the fight against its entrenched and ongoing chronic disease epidemic,” they wrote.