Pregnant women living in rural places in the United States struggle to find care. More than half of all women who live in rural places have to drive more than half an hour to get to a hospital that can care for them when they’re pregnant, giving birth, or caring for a newborn baby.

For many reasons, rural women are more likely to die in childbirth, and their babies are more likely to die within their first year of life. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the lack of care–people who live in rural places also tend to have more health problems and are more likely to be living in poverty.

But women with health problems are exactly the people who need doctors. And they don’t have them. While 15 percent of America’s women live in rural places, only 6 percent of obstetricians and gynecologists do.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Like with (almost) anything in our country, the situation is worse for women of color: In 2014, black infants from rural places were about twice as likely to die in their first year of life as rural white babies.

This project aims to understand why pregnant women in rural places aren’t receiving the care that they need and what we can do about it.

• Small Red - No Responsive Documents
• Large Red - Rejected
• Small Yellow - Awaiting Acknowledgement
• Large Yellow - Awaiting Response
• Small Blue - Fix Required
• Small Green - Partially Completed
• Large Green - Completed

Image via Flickr and is licensed under CC-BY 2.0