After Tragedy: One Father’s Fight to End America’s Black Maternal Health Crisis

The United States ranks 62nd in maternal deaths and has the highest maternal mortality rate among wealthy countries. For Black women in the U.S., the stats are even more daunting. They are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. 

Charles Johnson IV, founder and board chair at 4Kira4Moms, is changing this reality. His non-profit advocates for safer, more respectful, and equitable maternal health outcomes and the prevention of the tragic loss of mothers to preventable childbirth complications. Johnson’s mission emerged from tragedy: His wife, Kira Dixon Johnson, died after a routine C-section from preventable complications.

“With 100 percent certainty and every fiber of my being, I know that this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is the highest honor that I can pay Kira and every other mother that has made the ultimate sacrifice. Kira was always making lemonade out of lemons, and so that’s how we try to move in everything,” says Johnson.

In the latest episode of Milk Drunk by Bobbie, bestselling author and scholar Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs returns as host to sit down with Johnson, who she calls a force of nature. They discuss his wife’s beautiful life and tragic death, the state of maternal health, and his work to get more people informed and outraged at the maternal health crisis in America.

Dismissed and Denied: A Tragic Birthing Experience

Johnson gleefully describes his wife as “sunshine personified.” “She had this amazing, contagious personality, and she never met a stranger. She seized every single day,” he says. 

He recalls the harrowing day when he lost his wife at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills: “We walked in for what we expected to be the happiest day of our lives. We ended up walking straight into a nightmare.”

All signs pointed to both his wife and their new baby being perfectly healthy. Johnson says, “Kira was in exceptional health throughout her whole pregnancy. She had no preexisting conditions and no preeclampsia. She passed every single prenatal visit with flying colors.”

Johnson’s second son, Langston, was born at 2 p.m. Two hours later, Johnson noticed blood coming from her Foley catheter and notified the nurses, who ordered blood work and a CT scan.

Hours pass, still no CT scan, but Kira’s blood work comes back showing low blood levels. Johnson remembers noticing his wife becoming sensitive to touch and complaining about pain. Around 7 p.m., Kira is shivering uncontrollably and losing more blood. 

Johnson continuously asks for the CT scan to no avail. “This game of dismissal, denial and failure to take action continues to escalate by 8 p.m., and by 9 p.m., the only thing they’ve done by this time is give Kira IV fluids. I’m by her bedside, and I’m just doing my best to just tell her everything’s going to be okay,” he says.

At one point, Johnson recalls—the most difficult part of the story—pulling one nurse aside to plead for his wife. “I looked her in the eyes and said, ‘My wife is not doing well. They said that they were going to take her back for a CT scan. Nobody has come. They said that they might take her back for surgery, but nobody’s doing anything. Can you please just help us?’” 

The woman looks Johnson directly in his eyes, snatching her hands away, and says, “Sir, your wife just isn’t a priority right now.” 

A Lack of Human Decency and Care

Ultimately, Johnson believes that the staff and doctors failed his wife. They did not take her to the operating room until after midnight. One doctor promised Johnson that he’d open up the incision and see what was going on. He told him that he’d see his wife in 15 minutes. Johnson explains, “He said ‘15 minutes. She’ll be back in 15 minutes.’ I get to the end of this corridor, and the double doors open up and close. That was the last time I saw my wife alive.”

When the doctors finally operated, they found three liters of blood in Kira’s abdomen. “They allowed her to bleed and suffer needlessly for more than 12 hours,” Johnson says.

One of the greatest failures in Johson’s story is the lack of fundamental human decency. “For more than 10 hours, myself and my family begged and pleaded for them to just do something. To just see her, to validate her pain, and to take action,” he says.

Turning Pain Into Purpose

The day he lost his Kira, Johnson’s world turned upside down. He was left to care for their sons, Charles V and Langston. As Johnson attempted to move forward, he began to receive an outcry of support. People also reached out to say “me too.” 

“I began to hear stories of other families that had horrific birthing experiences. There were stories of obstetric violence, near misses, and women who had made that ultimate sacrifice, just trying to give the gift of life,” Johnson says. “The more I hear these stories, the more I’m thinking like, ‘Yo, what’s going on?’”

This curiosity spurred Johnson to research. What he found was shocking: “We are in the midst of an internal mortality right here in the United States. Not only do we lead the industrialized world in the number of women dying in childbirth, but, the statistic that haunted me and drives me now, is that 80 percent of these deaths are preventable. African American women are dying four to five times more often than white women. It shocked me.”

What surprised Johnson was that no one was talking about it. No one was outraged by the statistics. “How is this America’s dirty little secret?”

Although they were private people, Johnson felt that he owed it to Kira and their boys to do something. So he shared Kira’s story the day before Mother’s Day 2017. “I naively thought that I could share Kira’s story and maybe somebody might pay attention. I had no idea how Kira’s story would become a catalyst for maternal health.”

Maternal Health Progress and Hope for the Future

 Johnson says none of his work is possible without help from allies and partners. “Collaboration is our secret sauce. That’s how we have been able to do so much.” Since beginning his work in maternal health and launching 4Kira4Moms, Johnson has seen significant progress through collaborative efforts:

• Extended Medicaid postpartum coverage: “We’ve been able to pass sweeping legislation, not only at the federal but at the state level.” In 2021, only six states had postpartum coverage for mothers up to a year. (Most states were cutting mothers off after six weeks.) Now it’s up to 49 states with full coverage. 
• Increased resources for maternal activism: “From a community activism and grassroots standpoint, we are making sure that the organizations on the front lines—the doula and the community birth workers—are properly resourced and funded. We just passed a package associated with the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021, and we were able to provide hundred million dollars of funding.” 
• Increased awareness in the corporate sector: “Companies like Bobbie are making this a part of their corporate responsibility, which is something that we never saw before. What Bobbie has done has been a catalyst for other big organizations, like Nestle, Gerber, Walmart, Salesforce, and Google to step up to the plate and say, ‘We can do that too. Enough is enough.’”

Johnson and his maternal health allies are just getting started. He says he won’t stop until “every single family in our country has access to the safe, dignified birthing experience of their choice.”

Listen to part two of their conversation below.