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March 24

Why is South Dakota infant mortality so bad?

Wikipedia says it's among the highest rates of mortality in the United States. This is an outlier geographically. Are there political reasons for it or what? Rich (talk) 02:33, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At least in part, the Native American population is high, and the reservations have extraordinarily high rates of infant mortality. Acroterion (talk) 02:40, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

oh god that's terrible! thank you. Rich (talk) 03:43, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So why do the reservations have extraordinarily high rates of infant mortality? DuncanHill (talk) 02:28, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the raw statistics [1], and some of the causes, which boil down to gross disparities in availability and quality of health care [2] Acroterion (talk) 02:34, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Those statistics don't give infant mortality for Blacks or Hispanics in America. The figure for Blacks is worse than that for American Indians. And the percentage of American Indians in North Dakota may be high - but it is still only 5.4% of the total. As to reasons I had a quick look and it certainly wasn't straightforward, I think the jury is still out even on the major reasons. NadVolum (talk) 12:28, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I did not immediately see recent data for Indian reservations in South Dakota, but for 1987 I find a mortality rate reported for American Indian infants in Aberdeen, South Dakota of 19.8/1000 (I think a three-year average)^{[3] Table 2}, higher than a reported 17.5/1000 national average for that year for the group "Black, non-Hispanic". Apparently there are huge location-dependent disparities, since the first cited source reports (in Table 1) a mortality rate of "only" 11.1/1000 for 1987 for American Indian and Alaska Native infants combined. --Lambiam 16:46, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

South Dakota is the #2 state with the most people living in maternal health care deserts

Percent of state's births to parents who live in maternal health care deserts: 23.2% (California and New York are best: 0.3%)
The maternal mortality rate for indigenous people is 121 per 100,000, compared to 44 per 100,000 among white parents in the state.

Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:38, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]