IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/10.2105-ajph.2015.302566_0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Neighborhood disadvantage, preconception stressful life events, and infant birth weight

Author

Listed:
  • Witt, W.P.
  • Park, H.
  • Wisk, L.E.
  • Cheng, E.R.
  • Mandell, K.
  • Chatterjee, D.
  • Zarak, D.

Abstract

Objectives: We sought to determine whether the effects of preconception stressful life events (PSLEs) on birth weight differed by neighborhood disadvantage. Methods: We drew our data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (2001-2002; n= 9300). We created a neighborhood disadvantage index (NDI) using county-level data from the 2000 US Census. We grouped the NDI into tertiles that represented advantaged, middle advantaged, and disadvantaged neighborhoods. Stratified multinomial logistic regressions estimated the effect of PSLEs on birth weight, controlling for confounders. Results: We found a gradient in the relationship between women's exposure to PSLEs and having a very low birth weight (VLBW) infant by NDI tertile; the association was strongest in disadvantaged neighborhoods (adjusted odd ratio [AOR]=1.62; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.04, 2.53), followed by middle (AOR=1.39; 95% CI=1.00, 1.93) and advantaged (AOR=1.29; 95% CI= 0.91, 1.82) neighborhoods. We observed a similar gradient for women with chronic conditions and among minority mothers. Conclusions.: Women who experienced PSLEs, who had chronic conditions, or were racial/ethnic minorities had the greatest risk of having VLBW infants if they lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods; this suggests exacerbation of risk within disadvantaged environments. Interventions to reduce rates of VLBW should focus on reducing the deleterious effects of stressors and on improving neighborhood conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Witt, W.P. & Park, H. & Wisk, L.E. & Cheng, E.R. & Mandell, K. & Chatterjee, D. & Zarak, D., 2015. "Neighborhood disadvantage, preconception stressful life events, and infant birth weight," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(5), pages 1044-1052.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2015.302566_0
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2015.302566
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302566
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302566?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Akresh, Ilana Redstone & Do, D. Phuong & Frank, Reanne, 2016. "Segmented assimilation, neighborhood disadvantage, and Hispanic immigrant health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 114-121.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2015.302566_0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.