Maternal mortality risk among Black women in Brazil: a nationwide spatial consensus approach

A spatial consensus analysis of Brazilian surveillance data (2019–2024) identifies 13 municipalities with Confirmed Critical Risk for maternal mortality among Black women.

• Why it matters: Maternal mortality is preventable yet remains unevenly distributed within countries, and racial inequities persist alongside gaps in access to quality care.
• What they did: The study used a spatial Poisson probability model to find high-rate clusters and Bayesian hierarchical spatial models to smooth small-area rates, then integrated both into a five-level municipal risk typology.
• The result: Risk scenarios classified 13 municipalities as Confirmed Critical Risk, 28 as Persistent Regional Risk, 12 as Local Excess Alert, and 4 as Epidemiological Silence, supporting an operational surveillance tool for targeting inequities.

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