It’s getting harder to give birth in America

This past week we launchedTIME100 Health, our newest TIME100 list that seeks to recognize the most influential doctors, scientists, and researchers alongside others working to make a healthier world.

On a recent reporting trip to Birmingham, Ala., TIME'sAlana Semuelssaw first-hand the difficulties that many of those providers and their supporters are up against as she covered a troubling trend. In the last fifteen years hundreds of maternity wards have closed around the country, including Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, which shut its doors last October. Labor and delivery units are often in the red. Doctors are leaving the industry, with many saying their work is undervalued by private and public insurance providers.\xa0

These trends have adversely impacted vulnerable communities and hurt the quality ofmaternal carein the United States, doctors and researchers say. It’s something that feels particularly resonant this weekend, when we celebrate Mother’s Day in the United States.

Semuels, who this year won an award for her journalism from theSociety for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, is an expert at showing howeconomic trends influence the livesof TIME’s readers. Her reporting from Alabama was supported by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 Impact Fund for Reporting on Health Equity and Health Systems.

Please read Semuels’ storyhere. Let me know what you think?Sam@time.com

P.S. Watch the 2024 TIME100 Special—hosted by Taraji P. Henson and featuring performances by Dua Lipa and Fantasia Barrino, along with appearances from Patrick Mahomes, Maya Rudolph and Michael J. Fox—this Sunday at 10/9c on ABC. If you miss the live show, stream the next day on Hulu.