In the United States, Black-white disparities in maternal mortality—deaths related to pregnancy or childbirth—may be larger than previously reported, new research shows. Closing the gap involves addressing structural racism—that is, those aspects of social, political, economic, and health care systems that reinforce inequity, researchers say. Because pregnancy is riskier to women’s health than abortion, state…

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In estimating the magnitude of the pandemic, demographers have found that COVID-19 is likely to shorten the average U.S. lifespan in 2020 by about a year.

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As coronavirus cases rise in less densely populated states in the Midwest and West, the disease, combined with high levels of obesity in rural America, could pose major challenges for health care systems, suggests Mark Lee at the University of Minnesota. People of any age with obesity face a greatly increased risk of severe illness…

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Women with children and a heterosexual male partner do the most housework—more even than single moms, according to an analysis of time-use data.1 Specifically, married and cohabiting mothers report more housework than never-married or divorced/separated mothers, but all mothers report about the same amount of child-care time, find Joanna Pepin of the University of Texas…

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