ATLANTA — In the wake of a new, 800-page report from Cobb and Douglas Public Health, the agency’s deputy director briefed Cobb lawmakers this week on some of the county’s most pressing health challenges.
Cobb & Douglas Public Health’s Lisa Crossman outlined four priorities of the authority — improving public health infrastructure, reducing maternal and infant mortality, addressing the opioid crisis and reducing HIV infection rates — at a meeting of the county’s legislative delegation.
The priorities were developed based on needs identified in the community health assessment, prepared every five years by CDPH, as a sort of check-up on the state of the two counties.
Mothers and infants
The state of maternal and infant mortality in Cobb and Georgia took up the bulk of the discussion. While Crossman said “great strides” have been made in reducing mortality rates, there’s more work to be done.
“Particularly our Black mothers are about two times more likely to die from postnatal issues than are their white counterparts,” Crossman said. “So we really need to do something — that’s ridiculous to me, that’s ridiculous in Cobb County to have that happening.”
A state Department of Public Health fact sheet reported that from 2015 to 2017, Georgia had 25.1 mothers die per 100,000 live births.
That rate puts the state on par with countries such as Grenada, Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to the World Bank.
Of those deaths, 87% were considered preventable, per the state DPH. Black women in Georgia were 2.3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women.
State Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-east Cobb and chair of the House Public Health Committee, cautioned that people shouldn’t overstate the problem, lest patients grow skeptical of medical care.
“I think there’s a tendency to scare young mothers, especially…
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