Science

Lack of access to healthcare / nutrition

If you broke these stats out by racial group I am sure the numbers would be shocking. There's probably parts of the south where black infant mortality rivals Syria or something

Edit:

Low birth weight is the biggest driver and suggests nutrition, maternal complications tie to lack of healthcare, congenital malformations suggest environmental racism is also a factor at play here

Edit2: looking around a bit I wasn't too far off, the worst published counties in Alabama and Mississippi are at 15-16 which is just a hair shy of Syria's 16.5

And those are the published stats, I am sure the worst counties don't publish bc they don't even have the infrastructure for collecting