Event details

Tufts University professor Alecia McGregor will discuss how the widespread closures of maternity-care units in New Jersey have amplified the state’s severe racial disparity in maternal health, giving it the nation’s highest rate of black maternal mortality in 2019.

Alecia McGregor, an assistant professor of community health at Tufts University, will discuss how the widespread closures of maternity-care units in New Jersey have amplified the state’s severe racial disparity in maternal health. Despite its per capita wealth, New Jersey reported the nation’s highest rate of black maternal mortality in 2019. McGregor will explore the evolution of the state’s maternity-care deserts, where even the state capital of Trenton no longer has a hospital with an obstetric unit. McGregor was a postdoctoral research associate in the High Meadows Environmental Institute (formerly the Princeton Environmental Institute) and Princeton’s Center for Health and Wellbeing from 2014 to 2016, where she helped launch an initiative on Race, Inequality and Health Policy in the United States. This event will be held online via Zoom webinar — register here to receive a webinar link.

This event is organized by the High Meadows Environmental Institute, formerly known as the Princeton Environmental Institute.