Health Care Disparity and State-Specific Pregnancy-Related Mortality in the United States, 2005–2014

To investigate factors associated with differential state maternal mortality ratios and to quantitate the contribution of various demographic factors to such variation. In a population-level analysis study, we analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics database and the Detailed Mortality Underlying Cause of Death database (CDC WONDER) that contains mortality and population counts for all U.S. counties. Bivariate correlations between maternal mortality ratio and all maternal demographic, lifestyle, health, and medical service utilization characteristics were calculated. We performed a maximum likelihood factor analysis with varimax rotation retaining variables that were significant (P