Among women with preeclampsia, new Truveta Research findings show that Black women are two times more likely to experience heart failure than white women.
BELLEVUE, Wash. – February 8, 2023 – Today Truveta announced new maternal heart health and health equity research from Truveta Studio that explored nearly 500,000 female patient journeys to evaluate the racial and ethnic disparities in women who experienced preeclampsia and subsequent heart failure.
Preeclampsia is a condition marked by high blood pressure after 20 weeks (5 months) of pregnancy or soon after giving birth. The high blood pressure can only be reduced by giving birth. Heart failure in women following delivery is one of the leading causes of death of women following delivery in the United States.
One of the lead findings by Truveta Research is that Black women with preeclampsia are 2.0 times more likely to have heart failure compared to white women with preeclampsia. Black women with preeclampsia are 1.4 times more likely to have heart failure than Asian women with preeclampsia.
“It’s no secret – yet surprising and tragic – that the United States is one of the most dangerous high-income countries in which to give birth. It’s also unfortunately well known that nearly every maternal health outcome in the United States has worse outcomes for women of color compared to white women,” said Charlotte Baker, DrPH, MPH, CPH, Director of Epidemiology, Truveta. “Even though heart failure at and following delivery is rare, for those women it does affect the consequences are devastating. With better data and analytics, we can learn faster and improve outcomes for all mothers, especially those at higher risk.”
Research shows rates of preeclampsia and heart failure by race and ethnicity
Truveta Research found that the chance of having heart failure within 90 days of delivery is greater for women who experienced preeclampsia during their pregnancy. They also found this to be true within each race group; white women with preeclampsia were 5.3 times, Black women were 3.5 times, and Asian women were 8.0 times more likely to have heart failure post-delivery than their counterparts without preeclampsia. Similarly, Hispanic or Latino women were 5.5 times, non-Hispanic or non-Latino women were 4.9 times, and women of unknown or other Hispanic or Latino ethnicity were 6.9 times more likely to experience heart failure post-delivery than their counterparts without preeclampsia.
“Research like this usually takes years, not weeks,” said Nick Stucky, MD, PhD, vice president of Research at Truveta and practicing infectious disease physician and researcher at Providence Portland Medical Center. “Truveta Studio brings together unprecedented de-identified health data and analytics to study patient care and outcomes, enabling us to move from hypothesis to results faster than ever before. With this research today, we were able to reproduce research quickly and identify new trends and disparities to contribute critical new knowledge to this space and drive awareness that can hopefully improve maternal care today, not years from now.”
This research was conducted using Truveta Studio, which is an integrated solution that combines data and analytics to accelerate learning in real time. Truveta Studio offers the most timely, complete, and highest quality de-identified data on US public health to enable researchers to study patient care and outcomes on any condition, drug, or medical device
The full details of the research can be found on the Truveta blog.
About Truveta
Truveta was formed and governed by US health systems with a shared vision of saving lives with data. Truveta now offers the world’s first health data and analytics solution to study patient care and outcomes. To learn more, please follow us on LinkedIn and visit truveta.com.
About Truveta’s Members
Truveta’s 28 members provide 16% of patient care in the United States in more than 20,000 clinics and 700 hospitals. De-identified data from this care is provided to Truveta daily. Truveta membership includes Providence, Advocate Aurora Health, Trinity Health, Tenet Healthcare, Northwell Health, AdventHealth, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Baylor Scott & White Health, Bon Secours Mercy Health, Centura Health, CommonSpirit Health, Hawaii Pacific Health, HealthPartners, Henry Ford Health System, HonorHealth, MedStar Health, Memorial Hermann Health System, MetroHealth, Novant Health, Ochsner Health, Premier Health, Saint Luke’s Health System, Sentara Healthcare, Texas Health Resources, TriHealth, UnityPoint Health, Virtua Health, and WellSpan Health.