Poor neighborhoods, health care barriers are factors for heart disease risk in Black mothers

Living in a disadvantaged neighborhood contributes to a rare form of heart failure known as peripartum cardiomyopathy, a potentially deadly disease that disproportionately affects Black mothers.

That’s the key finding of my recent study, published in February 2025 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Peripartum cardiomyopathy can occur in pregnant or postpartum mothers during late pregnancy up to five months after birth. The disease is difficult to identify and is…