A new federal study has found yet more evidence of the racial health disparities that are all too common in our country: Black infants in 2020 had the highest rates of sudden infant deaths in the country — three times the rate of white infants.
The study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found that sudden infant deaths among babies of all races increased 15% between 2019 and 2020. While the study’s authors are calling for more research, they suggest that the pandemic, which had disproportionate impact on health, housing, food insecurity and other stressors in the Black community, may have played a role in the racial disparities in infant deaths, according to the Washington Post.
