Over the 14 years of case review, the Virginia Maternal Mortality Review Team noted the significance of chronic diseases in relation to mortality in pregnant women. As such, the Team elected to prepare this report, examining the trends and exploring chronic disease among PADs in Virginia and worked to identify risk factors associated with such deaths. This report focuses on women with chronic diseases (including chronic mental health and substance abuse issues) that died a PAD in Virginia between 1999 and 2012. These deaths include all manners of death (natural, homicide, suicide, accident, and undetermined).

Public health brief describing key findings from the Virginia PAMR with respect to motor vehicle accidents: 1) Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death for pregnant and recently pregnant women in Virginia, 2) Most women who died were under 30 years old, 3) Two-thirds of the decedents were not wearing seat-belts at the time of the injury.

This report provides an overview of the women who died from cancer during or soon after their pregnancies and provides key insights about these deaths after review by Virginia’s Maternal Mortality Review Team. And while pregnancy-associated deaths are rare events, understanding the circumstances of such deaths, many of them premature, can shed light on important areas for intervention.

Virginia’s Maternal Mortality Review Team reviewed nearly 400 cases of pregnancy-associated deaths to Virginia residents occurring between 1999 and 2007. These deaths are those that happen during pregnancy or within one year of the end of pregnancy. Findings indicate substance misuse is a contributing factor in nearly one-quarter of all pregnancy-associated deaths in Virginia regardless of the actual cause or manner of death. Slightly more than 10% (41) of the deaths reviewed were the direct result of drug overdoses, mostly from accidents or suicides. In light of the magnitude and urgency of this public health problem, the Team has undertaken an in-depth review of deaths that were the direct result of drug overdoses. This multidisciplinary Team examined the circumstances leading up to the fatal event to identify where reasonable changes could be made in the systems that served women to improve outcomes in similar circumstances.