A Comprehensive Assessment Model of Maternal Mortality Among Nigerian Adolescents and Young Adults: Evidence from The Global Burden of Disease Study, 1990–2017

Abstract

Maternal mortality among adolescents and young adults remains an important public-health and health-system challenge in Nigeria, where early pregnancy may intersect with inadequate access to skilled obstetric care, socioeconomic disadvantage, and age-related vulnerability. This study develops a comprehensive assessment model for examining maternal mortality among Nigerian adolescents and young adults using the conceptual and analytical foundations of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study, with particular attention to the 1990–2017 period. The study adopts a structured secondary-analysis approach based exclusively on the supplied literature, integrating global mortality evidence with empirical studies from Nigeria and comparable African settings. The proposed assessment model incorporates temporal trends, age-specific mortality, geographical and sociodemographic context, causes of maternal death, and health-system and obstetric factors. Existing evidence indicates that adolescents constitute an important risk group within maternal mortality research, while Nigerian hospital-based studies demonstrate substantial concern regarding obstetric outcomes among teenage pregnancies. The analysis further identifies a gap between broad population-level burden estimation and locally grounded explanations of adolescent maternal mortality. The proposed framework addresses this gap by connecting GBD-derived mortality patterns with contextual evidence concerning obstetric outcomes and health-service conditions. The study concludes that effective assessment of adolescent and young-adult maternal mortality requires simultaneous consideration of age, temporal change, causes of death, and contextual determinants rather than reliance on aggregate maternal mortality measures alone.