NEW YORK — Walmart is expanding health care coverage for employees who want to enlist the services of a doula, a person trained to assist women during pregnancies, to address racial inequities in maternal care.

After first offering doulas to employees in Georgia last year, the nation’s largest retailer said Wednesday that it will expand the same benefit to its employees in Louisiana, Indiana and Illinois.

Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women, largely due to differences in the quality of health care, underlying chronic conditions and structural racism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.