The holidays are upon us and so is the impending sense of doom we all face when we realize we forgot to get our mother a Christmas present. She said she wanted “world peace,” so what did she expect, really?
Alabama top stories in brief
- Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin testified before a congressional subcommittee on legalizing cannabis. Woodfin called for the federal government to legalize cannabis and for more research about the substance.
- Antoine Devaugh Rudolph, a 33 year-old inmate at Donaldson Correctional facility was found unresponsive in his cell last week, and later pronounced dead. As of Friday, the cause of death had not been announced. Rudolph marked the 36th person to die in Donaldson this year. Rudolph’s death came only three days after another Donaldson inmate, Kenneth Earl Ray, was stabbed to death.
- Governor Kay Ivey announced that First Solar Inc. has plans to invest over $1 billion to create a photovoltaic solar module manufacturing facility in Lawrence County. The facility is expected to create over 700 new jobs in North Alabama.
- Newly elected Alabama secretary of state Wes Allen has promised to make good on his campaign trail promise to withdraw Alabama from the Electronic Registration Information Center. ERIC is a non-profit whose mission is to “improve the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.” Outgoing secretary of state John Merrill has criticized Allen’s decision, saying it is based on faulty information and will make it difficult to keep individuals from voting in more than one state.
- The Morning Sickness Clinic recently opened in Birmingham as a practice specifically dedicated to assisting pregnant people experiencing morning sickness. Dr. Andrew Housholder, the clinic’s founder, previously worked in the Emergency Room and would frequently see pregnant people in need of treatment. The clinic was opened with the goal of serving those people and providing them a safe and comfortable space to be treated.
Infant mortality rate in Alabama is one of the highest in the nation
Currently, Alabama’s infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the nation, and will likely lower the state’s ranking against the other states in the union, according to State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris. The rate for 2021 was 7.6 per 1,000 live births which was up from 2020, when the rate was 7.0. This is far from the highest the rate has been – it was 9.1 in 2016 – and the overall trend for the decade has been going down.
That said, it is still significantly higher than the national rate of 5.5. The rate has a significant amount of variance among different racial demographics. Infant mortality rate for white infants was 5.8 in 2021, while among Black infants it was 12.1.
Infants are not the only casualty that Alabama is seeing at a higher than average rate, the maternal mortality rate during births is also very high. Currently, at 36.4 deaths per 100,000 live births, Alabama has the third highest maternal mortality rate in the nation.
The combination of both Alabama’s high infant and maternal mortality rate recently led to it being named the worst state to have a baby in a report by WalletHub.
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