“Maternity care desert is is where there is limited access for women who are pregnant.”
Access to health care is not just as simple as facilities being open. The distance someone has to travel to get to that facility also matters. The people who live in “Maternity Desert” in Washington , D.C. are predominantly African American, making this not just an issue of access but also racial inequality in health care access.
This video does a great job showing the effects of this unequal access on one woman, Amber, whose story demonstrates how the distance she needs to travel for health care impacts her health care and her employment. All of these issues intersect, and make it more difficult to carry a healthy pregnancy. This is unfortunately an issue that women all over the country face, not just in D.C. We should do better for families.
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