Black Maternal Health Week is a reminder that so many families experience pain, neglect, and loss during what should be one of the most joyous times of their lives. It's an urgent call for action. Black women in America are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, regardless of their income or education.

Last year, President Biden made an urgent call to action, proclaiming April 11th through the 17th, a time to embrace and focus on black maternal health.

In today’s episode we have Veronica Milliner from the NNLM All of Us Program Center and April Wright from Region 1 to tell us more about the effort that NNLM has made in bringing together a task force specifically aimed at celebrating Black Maternal Health Week.

NNLM is hosting two online classes this week, which are mentioned in this episode:
April 11th: https://www.nnlm.gov/training/class/unveiling-power-community-partnerships-transforming-black-maternal-health-outreach
April 17th: https://www.nnlm.gov/training/class/life-after-2-losses-support-advocacy-and-health-literacy-healthy-pregnancy

The NNLM is the outreach arm of the National Library of Medicine with the mission to advance the progress of medicine and improve public health by providing all U.S. health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and improving the public's access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about their health.

All of the artwork for this podcast series has been created with a generative AI image-to-image tool! The prompt for this episode was “an abstract painting celebrating Black Maternal Health.”

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