[Video] Black women are twice as likely as White women to die from a pregnancy-related condition, according to last year’s Maternal Mortality in Illinois Report. That report also found 91% of those deaths were preventable. The new documentary “The Fight for Black Lives” chronicles the stories of Black mothers who faced racial inequities in the health care system. The film comes as Gov. J.B. Pritzker is proposing $4 million dollars in his new budget proposal aimed at addressing the issue.

[Video] "It's an amazing new film about disparities in healthcare for Black and White women but it's also really about disparities in healthcare for everyone...it really sheds a light on especially maternal mortality and how racism implicitly gets into healthcare". - E. Scott Osborne

“The Fight for Black Lives” selected for Santa Barbara International Film Festival. In the United States, Black newborns are 2.5 times more likely to die than white newborns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the mortality rate for Black mothers (and Black Americans in general) skyrocketed. UChicago Prof. Micere Keels recognized the gap between what research tell us and the media discourse. 

When asked about the impetus behind her documentary “The Fight for Black Lives,” Micere Keels lamented the limited power of statistics, saying, “We’ve known these numbers for a hundred years, but numbers don’t prompt action [or] policy … It’s the story that translates.”