Dr. Shalon Irving (She/Her)

by Isra Ismail (She/Her)

Dr. Shalon Irving was an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She dedicated her career to minimizing the existing health disparities among communities of color as well as the negative health outcomes.

Irving was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, in 1980. She later relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, in 2015 to further pursue her career. Throughout her career, she focused on bringing light to the struggles of the black community in regard to healthcare. Her goal was to uncover how an individual’s lack of healthcare options leads to poor health.  She primarily focused on how childhood experiences affect an individual’s health later on in life, concentrating on how children’s lives went off track and finding ways to make them strong and resilient.

By the time she was 25, Dr. Irving had already made history. She was the first to earn a dual PhD in sociology and gerontology at Purdue University. She also earned a Master’s of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, as well as completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Morgan State University.

On January 28, 2017, three weeks after Irving had given birth to her daughter Soleil, she passed away from avoidable complications with postpartum hypertension.

Dr. Shalon Irving’s tragic death has greatly contributed to renewed conversation about the rising maternal mortality rate of Black women in the US. The manner in which Dr. Irving’s death happened led public health leaders, policy makers, health providers, researchers, educators, and the media to demonstrate how urgent it was to address the pressing issue of maternal mortality rates among Black women.

Even with all of Dr. Irving’s credentials, experience, economic status, and notable work against health disparities, becoming a victim of the increasing maternal mortality rate among Black women was something she could not avoid. A black woman has a 243% higher chance of dying from pregnancy-related causes than a white woman. Dr. Irving worked to eradicate the healthcare disparities as well as negative healthcare outcomes, yet she ended up being a symbol of one of the biggest healthcare disparities that Black women face: Maternal Mortality.

It is apparent how Dr. Irving’s tragic death shed light on the issue of increasing Maternal Mortality rates among Black women. It’s important to listen to Black women and validate their experiences, considering how high the pregnancy-related complications and deaths are on the rise, regardless of factors such as education and income.

Dr. Shalon Irving’s work throughout her life proved just how dedicated she was to bridging the gap of health inequities in communities of color. The work and legacy she left behind will not be forgotten and will be an integral part of history. Her story led to an overwhelming increase in conversations regarding maternal mortality, which, as a result, led to new laws and programs being created.