More hot days mean higher pregnancy risk, according to climate research
As average temperatures heat up across the world, it's posing a threat to global pregnancies. According to a report from Climate Central, nearly ever country on earth is seeing more days with extreme heat, linked with higher pregnancy risks.
ALSO READ: In 2024, North Carolina saw 2nd warmest year and despite drought, Helene kept rainfall above average
The study tracked the number of days between 2020 and 2024 a country, state or city experienced temperatures above the 95th percentile of the 30-year average temperatures.
For example, in Charlotte, 95% of the time we should expect temperatures to be below 94 degrees. During the years in this study, the researchers found the city hit those temperatures about 13 times a year, 11 more days than researchers would expect to find if the city wasn't experiencing a warming trend due to climate change.
The more of these warmer days we see, the riskier things can get for vulnerable populations like young children and expectant mothers.
Dr. Melissa Woolworth, an academic specialist at OB/Gyn at Atrium Health, explains that due to the increased blood flow women experience during pregnancy, they're more at risk for heat stress and dehydration.
'If mom's really overheated, the body's really going to divert blood flow to the skin to try and cool her off better, and that's going to affect blood flow to the placenta,' she said. 'When mom's not feeling well, we definitely see that baby is suffering from those effects as well.'
This can lead to pre-term labor, lower weights and in the worst cases, higher risks of a stillborn birth. According to Woolworth, the risk is highest in the third trimester, but prolonged exposure to heat poses a threat at every stage of pregnancy.
'There are some effects for first trimester moms, as well,' she said. 'We know there's an increased risk for miscarriage and congenital anomalies.'
The Climate Central Study looked at 247 countries in total, finding the highest increases in pregnancy heat risk days in the Caribbean, parts of Central and South America as well as the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Across the United States, the study found on average pregnancy heat risk days doubled, but the worst increases were primarily concentrated in the Southwest.
To help pregnant patients cope with higher temperatures, Woolworth advises anyone expecting to limit their time outside, drink plenty of fluids and if they need to be outside to stick to shady areas.
She also advises medical providers to be aware of patients who may not have reliable access to air conditioning.
'A lot of our patients who are under resourced face these types of effects of dehydration and heat a little bit more profoundly,' she said. 'If they're feeling bad or their baby's not moving well, then definitely encourage them to seek medical attention.'
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This number is starkly higher than the long-term average number of billion-dollar weather events since 1980, which is nine. The growing risks are not lost on new parents, said epidemiologist Jennifer Barkin, a professor at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia. Maternal mental health has always been a focus of Barkin's research. Recently, she's begun to focus on the impact of climate disasters. In one study, Barkin's team surveyed 101 postpartum women in Australia about their levels of distress. Unsurprisingly, the more aware the women were of the growing risk of climate catastrophes, and the more vulnerable they expected to be when one struck their community, the higher their rates of anxiety and distress. Days after her team submitted the Australian paper for publication last fall, Helene arrived in southern Georgia. Although the storm didn't hit Barkin's home in Macon directly, it caused widespread flooding and power outages in the rural counties south of town, where Barkin's research team works with pregnant and postpartum women. "I don't think that area had ever seen a storm like that before," Barkin said. "We weren't able to conduct business as usual because [my team] didn't have access to gas or electricity." In the months since, her team interviewed 24 new moms in Georgia, including Monard, about their experiences and their feelings of ongoing safety. Hyde-Hensley said the planet's environmental future has come up again and again in her conversations with clients. Even before the storms, many new parents felt profoundly worried about "what their child is going to have to deal with for the next 60 to 80 years," she said. The storm made that threat tangible, and plunged some into anxiety about future storms. That fear is rational, because stakes get higher as more climate disasters strike a community, Barkin said. "You're more resilient if it's not chronic. When an area is getting flooded over and over, the community can't bounce back the same way," she said. Community comes together after disaster hits "It was pitch black and you couldn't see anything, but all you could hear was the storm, the trees just literally snapping, sounding like popsicle sticks breaking off into the distance," said Allyson Byrd, whose son was three months old when Hurricane Helene hit. "That was such an eerie, kind of an ominous type feeling." Byrd, who has three older children from ages 6 to 9, said the storm took a mental toll on her. Byrd lives with her four children and her parents in her hometown of Swainsboro, Georgia. "It was hard to keep [my children] afloat and myself afloat mentally," she said. Even Byrd's older children were too young to fully understand what was happening, why the lights were out for so long, and why there was nothing else to keep them busy except each other's company. "That was a lot mentally for me to try to balance," Byrd said. "I needed to stay stable myself while keeping the kids mentally stable and not let them see me fall apart." There was also the stress of trying to figure out how to store breast milk at a safe temperature without a working refrigerator. When the storm made landfall in South Georgia, Byrd was trying to make the transition from breast milk to formula with her new baby. But it was hard to locate ice to keep the milk from spoiling. "Once people were able to get some type of cellular service they were making social media posts to get cans of milk from people," Byrd said. Despite the hardship, Byrd said it was encouraging to see her community come together to support each other during the storm. "Economic status and where you stood as far as salary level, all of that just got put in the background," Byrd said. "It didn't matter." Herman, the psychiatric nurse practitioner in West Jefferson, has observed that both giving and receiving this kind of community support has served her clients. "It's so helpful to us, as humans, to be able to extend help to one another, and I think that was protective to people who had that opportunity." Research by Harville's team and others has confirmed that social support can shield pregnant people from the worst mental health outcomes of a disaster. Among other things, Harville's team found that people who had sustained major intangible losses-family stability, feelings of closeness and companionship with loved ones, a daily routine, and time for sleep-suffered far more depression than those whose losses were mainly tangible-cars, homes, possessions, even access to food. This critical support can come from a trusted maternal health provider. After experiencing major floods in Queensland, Australia, a study published in 2018 found women who had a strong and continuous relationship with their midwife throughout the disaster had fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression than those who didn't. Birth doulas, whose roles include helping postpartum mothers meet their emotional and physical needs, may have played a similar role for their clients during and after Helene. "As a birth doula, we have very close contact with our clients personally before labor and after labor," said Emily Bohannon, executive director of the Birth Circle Community, a nonprofit organization aimed at empowering families through efforts like birth preparation classes and postpartum social support in Statesboro, Georgia. When Helene hit, the group amped up their support for families with new babies, organizing a supply drive for clean water, formula, and diapers. The community support was overwhelming; at the end of the drive, the Birth Circle Community ended up with double the amount of items they started with. "Within a week, we were able to get hundreds of items from local people and nonprofits and business owners," Bohannon said. "The day of the supply drive, we had dozens of families show up and get their items that they needed." Social support can also come from public programs. Harville's team compared Katrina-affected pregnant women who had standard prenatal care to those who also received services from Healthy Start New Orleans. Healthy Start, a federal program started in 1991, provides services to families in 115 American communities, from pregnancy until the child reaches 18 months old. Healthy Start outreach workers provide prenatal care and education, help families navigate housing and food services, promote fathers' involvement, and facilitate mental health screenings and referrals. Harville's team found that compared to the women who received standard prenatal care, those in Healthy Start were disproportionately young, low-income, unpartnered, and Black, had suffered worse experiences in the storm, and had more symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress than their better-resourced peers outside of the program-all factors associated with worse birth outcomes. Through Healthy Start, women received mental health counseling and prenatal education, and their birth outcomes were no different than those of their peers with more resources. Awareness of postpartum depression has exploded over the last decade, said Wendy Davis, president and CEO of Postpartum Support International, a nonprofit that provides support to new parents struggling with their mental health and trains health care professionals on the issue. Compared to 10 years ago, more providers are educated about postpartum depression, some states require insurance companies to cover it, the screening rate has increased, and there are better services for those who suffer. At the end of President Donald Trump's first term, he signed a bill creating the Maternal Mental Health Hotline, whose counselors answer calls and texts 24 hours a day in English and Spanish. The hotline is operated by PSI, whose counselors provide a listening ear, advice, and connections to local therapists and support groups for parents struggling with their mental health. Davis said that use of the hotline has steadily climbed since it launched on Mothers Day 2022, and it now receives thousands of calls and messages every month. Davis said that outreach to the hotline spikes after hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires. The Biden-Harris administration also embraced the issue, releasing a blueprint for lowering the country's sky-high levels of maternal mortality, which is highest for Black mothers. It's unclear if these new investments in the wellbeing of young families will remain intact under Trump's second administration, which has pursued sweeping cuts to health services and research. Within weeks of Trump's inauguration, the administration paused the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, an annual survey of maternal and infant health widely considered the gold-standard for maternity mental health data. At the end of March, the entire staff overseeing the survey was placed on administrative leave. The administration has also revoked billions in grants that had already been given to state health departments, including some that had funded maternal mental health services. Research on maternal and infant mortality has also been affected. Much of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Reproductive Health, which studies maternal health, was shuttered, as was its Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. More than a dozen research centers designed to investigate and improve maternal health were established in 2023 through a $168 million initiative by the National Institutes of Health; the funding of which is now in question. Harville says her current disaster research is not federally funded, but she has other grants she's "keeping a nervous eye on." Healthy Start was among the programs whose funding was briefly suspended by a Trump executive order in January before a federal judge blocked the move. Late last year, some versions of the Republican-proposed House budget bill sought to eliminate funding for Healthy Start. The administration is also reported to be considering deep cuts to Medicaid, which finances at least 42% of all births in the country. Davis said the hotline seems to be safe for now. The federal workers who provided administrative oversight of the Maternal Mental Health Hotline were laid off as part of the Department of Government Efficiency workforce reduction, Davis said, but other agency officials have stepped in to do that work, and the hotline remains operational and well supported. She said PSI's contract was recently reupped for three years, which she hopes will protect them from cuts. But she said it is painful to see other funding setbacks, which could slice into the real progress made on the issue over the last decade. "It's been so promising to see state and health care policy start to focus on this very vulnerable and important time," she said. In February 2025, five months after Hurricane Helene made landfall, the Swainsboro resident, Jelessica Monard, gave birth to a healthy baby girl. With power restored and her fridge back up and running, Monard's fiance visited for several weeks in February and into March, taking time off from his job in New Jersey to help with their daughter. "I could get some sleep. I could pump. I had a schedule," Monard said. "It was easier." This story was produced through a collaboration between Daily Yonder and Climate Central. Climate Central scientist Daniel Gilford contributed data reporting. This story was produced by The Daily Yonder and reviewed and distributed by Stacker. © Stacker Media, LLC.
