Black women in the U.S were, on average, six times more likely to be murdered than their white peers for the years 1999 through 2020, according to an analysis of racial disparities in U.S. homicide rates to be released by Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. It also indicates that Black women are more likely than white women to be killed by guns. The study is the first to analyze homicide trends spanning two decades among women aged 25 to 44—the ages when women are most likely to be murdered. The findings are published in The Lancet(link is external and opens in a new window).

It is well known that homicide rates among Black women in the US are disproportionately high compared to white women, and that Black women tend to be murdered at younger ages and at higher rates than other women of color in the US, including Native American and Alaska Native women. Despite this, data on the disparities remains limited.

“As a scholar whose research examines intimate partner violence, I have long known that there were disparities in homicide rates between Black and white women. To uncover the fact that Black women are murdered at rates as high as 20 to 1 is heart-breaking and underscores the urgent need to make substantive structural shifts,” says Dr. Bernadine Waller, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral research fellow in the Psychiatry Department at Columbia University Irving Medical Center with a dual appointment at New York State Psychiatric Institute.

The study findings also show that:

• Homicide rates among Black women were significantly higher than for white women in all 30 states analyzed, with the biggest differences in states with the highest racial inequities.
• The greatest disparity in homicide rates was in Wisconsin in 2019-2020, when Black women were 20 times more likely to be murdered than white women.
• Black women in the U.S. were more likely than white women to be killed by a firearm, particularly those in the Northeast and Midwest.

The evidence suggests a strong link exists between higher homicide rates and the effects of deeply entrenched racial inequities—which manifest through factors such as educational attainment, unemployment, and wealth distribution—across the U.S. This suggests that measures to reduce structural racism in the U.S could help prevent elevated rates of homicide among Black women. Understanding how disparities in homicide rates change over time at state and regional level may help identify areas where intervention is needed most.

The authors used CDC WONDER public health data to carry out a cross-sectional analysis of homicide death rates for Black and white women in the U.S. between 1999 and 2020. The analysis focused on women aged 25-44 years in the 30 states with enough homicides (more than nine in any year) for analysis.

Results were produced for five time periods: 1999-2003; 2004-2008; 2009-2013; 2014-2018; and 2019-2020. The method of homicide was analyzed for four U.S. regions: South, Midwest, West, and Northeast.

The findings indicate Black women in the U.S. consistently had higher homicide rates compared to white women between 1999 and 2020. The overall homicide rate among Black women in 2020 was 11.6 per 100,000 population, compared with 3 per 100,000 among white women. This was virtually unchanged from 1999, when the rate among Black women was 11.6 per 100,000 compared to 2.9 per 100,000 in white women. While disparities in homicide rates fell between 1999 and 2013—due to a decrease in homicide rates in Black women—they increased from 2013 to 2020. At the state level, there were differences in how disparities in homicide rates decreased or increased between 1999 and 2020.

Homicide rates among Black women were higher than their white peers during all periods in every state analyzed. While the greatest inequities in homicide rates were in Wisconsin in 2019-2020, when Black women were twenty times more likely to be murdered than white women, the greatest disparities overall, were in the Midwest, where Black women in 2020 were over seven times more likely to be murdered than white women.

Notably, states with the greatest disparities in homicide rates were in parts of the country with a high proportion of people of low socioeconomic status living close together. These areas also tend to have histories of slavery and lynching, and are places where especially tense Black Lives Matter protests took place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our findings indicate that the greatest inequities are in the areas of the country where concentrated disadvantage is pronounced. Thus, focusing on historical structural racism’s long-lasting legacy in the U.S. is imperative. Efforts aimed at reducing disproportionate homicide deaths among Black women can be implemented through addressing the role of structural racism when it comes to policies and practices that increase Black women’s risk and lessen Black women’s access to much needed resources,” said Victoria A. Joseph, a co-author of the paper and a data analyst in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

Gun deaths among Black and white women in the US increased, with women in general more than twice as likely (odds of 2.44) to be killed by firearms in 2019-2020 compared to 1999-2003. However, Black women were more likely than white women to be killed by a firearm (odds of 1.38).

The odds of gun deaths among Black women increased over time compared to white women. In 2020, Black women in the Northeast were three times more likely than white women (odds of 3.02) to be killed by a firearm, while firearm homicides among Black women in the Midwest were more than six times higher (odds of 6.31) than among white women. In the South, Black women were around one and a half times (odds of ~1.5) more likely to be killed by a firearm. The West’s sample size was too small to be included in this part of the analysis.

“Available data indicate that homicides in the US continued to escalate in many areas of the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, which also intersected with widespread national protests after the murder of George Floyd. These trends reflect systems that have long disserviced communities of color, and underscore that sustained investment and vision to support underserved communities are critical to reverse racial injustices that impact health and wellbeing.” said Katherine Keyes, senior author of the paper and professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

The study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health, grants L30 MH131137 and T32MH096724.

*Data on the 30 individual states included in the analysis can be found in Table 1 in the Article.*

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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Suicide rates among Black women increased from 1999 to 2020, especially among Black teens and young adults, according to latest research published by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The study is the first to examine the epidemiology of suicide among Black females in the U.S. by geographical region. The results are published in the American Journal of Psychiatry(link is external and opens in a new window).

Among Black women ages 15 to 84, suicide rates rose from 2 percent in 1999 to 3.4 percent in 2020. Increases considerably spiked among Black women and girls ages 15 to 24, rising from 1.9 to 4.9 per 100,000 in the time span.

“Suicides are rapidly increasingly among young, Black females in the U.S.,” said Victoria Joseph, MPH, an analyst in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, and first author. “High rates among those aged 25–27 years, suggest that this age may be a developmental period for Black women with particular need of additional support.”

“These findings are in line with evidence that suicidal behaviors are increasing among minoritized youth. While the reasons why remain under investigation, it could be that cyberbullying and online racial attacks toward Black female youth may be on the rise, in particular, and therefore interventions targeting certain stressors are particularly critical for young Black women. noted Katherine Keyes, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, and senior author.

While structural racism from stigma and a mistrust of support systems can reduce access to care of Black youth it may also play a role in suicidal behavior, according to Joseph and colleagues, as access to help during a suicidal crisis is a critical component of suicide prevention efforts.

Using the National Center for Health Statistics’ Multiple Cause of Death 1999-2020 database which covers year of death, race, sex, age, and U.S. census region, the researchers focused on suicide deaths among Black or African-American individuals classified as female ages 15 to 84. This included in total 9,271 suicide deaths, ranging from 289 in 1999 to 652 in 2020. “We selected 2010 as our reference period as it was an inflection point for subsequent increases in suicide deaths,” observed Joseph.

Evaluating suicide rates by age, period, and cohort provided data about suicide risk for specific birth cohorts, and across recent time periods, “enabling more precise identification of populations in which interventions are particularly urgent,” according to the authors.

Results indicated the presence of a “clear age effect” with higher rates among younger women; a period effect “with rates generally increasing across time for most ages”; and a cohort effect “with suicide rates highest among females born after 2002 as well as a grouping in suicide rates among those youngest affected by suicide.

With regard to region of the country, suicide rates among Black women were highest in the West, rising to nearly 5 suicide deaths per 100,000 among those ages 25 to 34. Also notable: deaths were concentrated in the South due in part to the larger Black population in that region.

“Intimate partner violence, neighborhood violence, and lack of investment into federal and state support systems  also contribute to poor mental health outcomes and limited treatment access” said Joseph and “are overrepresented risk factors among Black girls and women in some areas.”

“We encourage future research to fine tune deeper delineations that take into account and consider state level trends and analyses among various ethnicities and gender identities,” said Keyes.

Co-authors are Gonzalo Martínez-Alés, Hospital La Paz Institute for Health Research, Madrid, Spain;  Mark Olfson and Madelyn Gould, Columbia irving Medical Center; Jeffrey Shaman, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Climate School; and Catherine Gimbrone, Columbia Mailman School.

The study was supported by National Institutes of Health, grant R01 MH 121410.

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What’s the best way to fight poverty? Make sure there are fewer pregnancies to single mothers and teenagers, some economists would say. That’s why states including Delaware and Colorado have, in the last five years, doubled down on long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) like IUDs or implants. Partnering with an organization called Upstream, Delaware is counseling women to get LARCs, and has reduced unintended pregnancies as a result. 

Prescribing more birth control is a positive thing, usually. But LARCs can be problematic because a specialist needs to remove them, complicating the timing of a woman’s decision to have children. Some providers have reported discouraging women from removing IUDs if they feel that doing so is not in the patient (or society’s) best interest. 

In recent years, these longer-term birth control methods may have been targeted at women of color and poorer women, some academic studies have found, a finding that reignites long-term concerns about eugenics and birth control. One study found that, even controlling for insurance and age, Black patients were twice as likely to be prescribed LARCs instead of a short-acting method of birth control like pills, compared to non-Black patients. 

I am planning to write a series of stories in TIME about the lived medical experiences of low-income women and Black women in states with restrictive abortion rules, and whether they are experiencing coercion in the prescription of birth control. So often, medical care in these communities focuses on what is “‘best” for people overall without listening to what individual patients actually want. It is certainly concerning to hear economists talk about birth control as a poverty eradication method. Are doctors targeting low-income and Black women for LARCs and types of birth control that are more difficult to discontinue?

This is an important question because of the history of eugenics in the U.S. A century ago, the first conference on American birth control met to talk about how birth control could solve societal ills. By the 1960s, forced sterilizations were being performed on Black women at a rate three times higher than on white women. This issue is extremely complicated, since policymakers want to make sure that all women have access to birth control, but also that efforts are not unfairly targeting certain racial or socioeconomic groups. The goal of this project, supported by a grant from the Center’s 2023 Impact Fund for Reporting on Health Equity and Health Systems, is to make people think about how we talk about and prescribe birth control today, and to inform readers and policymakers on best practices for making sure people have the contraceptives they need, without feeling targeted for an insidious form of reproductive coercion. 

“This system frequently functions to privilege White control over reproduction and compromise the reproductive control of communities of color,” a group of female doctors and public health specialists wrote in an August 2, 2023 article in the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health. 

I am planning to partner with a local Black journalist to report this story, and we hope we can hear from many women about their experience. The women being targeted for birth control would benefit by having their voices magnified. Especially because there are worrying precedents about reproductive health being set in Southern states, including a whistleblower complaint in 2020 that said doctors at a detention center in Georgia were performing unnecessary hysterectomies on detainees.

There are numerous academics already working on studies about reproductive coercion, especially around LARCs, and I hope to use that work to guide my research. But I also think it will be very important to hear the voices of women seeking care. If we’ve learned nothing else in the last few years, it’s that politicians and courts don’t always listen to what women actually want or need when it comes to women’s reproductive health. 

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“I was recently the victim of an act of violence by a man,” she wrote in the New York Times, without naming Lanez. The op-ed was published shortly before a judge released him on bail and ordered him to stay away from her.

“After a party, I was shot twice as I walked away from him,” she wrote about the attacker. “We were not in a relationship. Truthfully, I was shocked that I ended up in that place.”

In the piece titled, “Why I Speak Up For Black Women,” the hip-hop star writes that “Black women are still constantly disrespected and disregarded in so many areas of life.”

In her first public comments on the matter since Lanez was charged Thursday, she explains why, on July 12, the night she was shot in the feet in the Hollywood Hills, she declined to tell police or otherwise publicize that her injuries were from gunfire.

“My initial silence about what happened was out of fear for myself and my friends,” she writes. “Even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism and judgment. The way people have publicly questioned and debated whether I played a role in my own violent assault proves that my fears about discussing what happened were, unfortunately, warranted.”

Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, made his court appearance by phone in Los Angeles on charges of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle. He said only “yes, your honor” to a series of questions from the judge and did not enter a plea. His arraignment was postponed until Nov. 18.

Lanez’s bail was set at $190,000, which was promptly posted, and he was ordered to make no contact with Megan Thee Stallion and to surrender any guns he owns. He has been free since he was briefly jailed after an arrest on suspicion of illegal weapon possession on the day of the shooting.

His attorney Shawn Holley declined comment afterward.

The day after he was charged, Lanez said on Twitter that “the truth will come to the light” and “a charge is not a conviction.”

After teasing on Sept. 24 that he might tell his side of the story on social media later that night, he instead released a new album, “Daystar,” which currently sits at No. 10 on the Billboard album chart.

Prosecutors allege Lanez fired on Megan Thee Stallion, whose legal name is Megan Pete, after she got out of an SUV during an argument. If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of about 23 years.

In her op-ed, she puts her shooting and its aftermath in the context of larger issues for Black women, “who struggle against stereotypes and are seen as angry or threatening when we try to stand up for ourselves and our sisters.”

“We deserve to be protected as human beings,” she writes. “And we are entitled to our anger about a laundry list of mistreatment and neglect that we suffer.”

Megan Thee Stallion has had a breakout run in the past two years that has put her among the biggest stars in hip-hop. She was nominated for artist of the year at the MTV Video Music Awards, was the musical guest on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live,” and her guest stint on the Cardi B song “WAP” helped turn the track — and music video — into a huge cultural phenomenon.

-By ANDREW DALTON AP Entertainment Writer

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