Temperatures in the Arctic are increasing at more than double the global average and immense areas of the Antarctic ice sheet are positioned for collapse. The changes taking place in the polar regions have vast implications for both geopolitics and the 4 million people who call the Arctic home.
Hosted by the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, Navigating the Poles distills cutting-edge research and highlights emerging policy issues in the polar regions—with an emphasis on the intersection of governance, culture, environmental change, economic development, and security.
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The Impacts of Climate Change on Alaska Native Maternal Health (Part 1 of 2)
›Dot-Mom // Navigating the Poles // October 14, 2020 // By Deekshita Ramanarayanan, Marisol Maddox, Bethany Johnson & Michaela Stith
Each year, 700 women in the United States die as a result of pregnancy-related complications. In fact, the United States has the highest maternal mortality ratio of all high-income countries—16.7 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. For Indigenous/Alaskan Native women, that number is even higher: Indigenous/Alaska Natives are 2.3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white counterparts. While recent years have seen growing national attention to the U.S. maternal mortality crisis, research and advocacy for Indigenous peoples’ maternal health in the United States has been limited. This research gap includes the Alaskan Native peoples—Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and multiple Diné tribes.
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Introducing “Navigating the Poles”
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The polar regions of Antarctica and the Arctic have long captured the world’s imagination as seas and continents covered in unending ice. But the reality of the two regions is quickly shifting, with cascading consequences for the globe.
