For Immediate Release
Pregnant Women 5 Times More Likely to Die by Homicide
Contact: Kathryn Ryan
914-740-2250
kryan@liebertpub.com
New Rochelle, NY, September 7, 2021—Pregnant women are 5 times more likely to die by homicide than their non-pregnant peers who died by violent means. Intimate partner violence (IPV) was involved in 61% of pregnancy-associated homicides, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women’s Health. Click here to read the article now.
“To effectively address maternal mortality in the United. States, pregnancy-associated maternal deaths caused by violent or self-inflicted harm must be thoroughly reviewed,” state study coauthors Jennifer Miller, DrPH and Susan Rensing, PhD, from Kansas State University. “To do this, MMRCs [Maternal Mortality Review Committees] should seek to identify all contributing factors at the individual, provider, facility, system, and community levels. Directly linking NVDRS [National Violent Death Reporting System] data with MMRIA [Maternal Mortality Review Information Application] data would allow for review that is more efficient and could reduce barriers to seeing the full picture of what occurred during a violent maternal death.”
“The results of this study show an increased risk for pregnancy-associated homicide and suicide during pregnancy and the postpartum period. The late postpartum and pregnancy periods showed increased risk of interpersonal violence-related homicide. These may be areas to target for risk reduction interventions,” says Journal of Women’s Health Editor-in-Chief Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women’s Health, Richmond, VA.
About the Journal
Journal of Women’s Health, published monthly, is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women, as well as diseases that present differently in women. Led by Editor-in-Chief Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women’s Health, Richmond, VA, the Journal covers the latest advances and clinical applications of new diagnostic procedures and therapeutic protocols for the prevention and management of women’s healthcare issues. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Women’s Health website. Journal of Women’s Health is the official journal of the Society for Women’s Health Research.
About the Publisher
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research. A complete list of the firm’s more than 100 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.