Alison Gemmill1, Ralph Catalano2, Héctor Alcalá3, Deborah Karasek4, Joan A Casey5, Tim A Bruckner6. 1. Department of Family, Population, and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA. Electronic address: agemmill@jhu.edu. 2. School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. 3. Program in Public Health, Department of Family, Population and Prevention Medicine, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA. 4. Department of OB/GYN and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA. 5. Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, USA. 6. Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Research suggests that sociopolitical stressors connected with the 2016 presidential election were associated with increases in preterm birth among Latina women. This study determined whether periviable births (<26 weeks gestation), which exhibit extremely high rates of infant morbidity and mortality, among US Latina women increased above expected levels after the 2016 US presidential election. METHODS: We assigned singleton live births among Latina and non-Latina white women in the US to 96 monthly conception cohorts conceived from January 2009 through December 2016. We constructed risk ratios by dividing the rate of periviable birth among Latina women by the rate among non-Latina white women. We used time-series methods to determine if the risk ratio of periviable births in cohorts conceived by Latina women and exposed to the election of 2016 exceeded those expected from autocorrelation and calendar effects. RESULTS: We found an outlying sequence of risk ratios among Latina women starting with the cohort conceived in April and ending with that conceived in November 2016. Increases in the ratios ranged from 0.07 above an expected of 1.61 for the cohort conceived in June, to 0.39 above an expected of 1.27 for the cohort conceived in April. CONCLUSION: We find that pregnancies in gestation at the time of the 2016 election among Latina women yielded more than expected periviable births. These findings support the argument that the prospect of anti-immigrant policies promised by the Trump campaign sufficiently stressed Latina women to affect the timing of birth.
OBJECTIVE: Research suggests that sociopolitical stressors connected with the 2016 presidential election were associated with increases in preterm birth among Latina women. This study determined whether periviable births (<26 weeks gestation), which exhibit extremely high rates of infant morbidity and mortality, among US Latina women increased above expected levels after the 2016 US presidential election. METHODS: We assigned singleton live births among Latina and non-Latina white women in the US to 96 monthly conception cohorts conceived from January 2009 through December 2016. We constructed risk ratios by dividing the rate of periviable birth among Latina women by the rate among non-Latina white women. We used time-series methods to determine if the risk ratio of periviable births in cohorts conceived by Latina women and exposed to the election of 2016 exceeded those expected from autocorrelation and calendar effects. RESULTS: We found an outlying sequence of risk ratios among Latina women starting with the cohort conceived in April and ending with that conceived in November 2016. Increases in the ratios ranged from 0.07 above an expected of 1.61 for the cohort conceived in June, to 0.39 above an expected of 1.27 for the cohort conceived in April. CONCLUSION: We find that pregnancies in gestation at the time of the 2016 election among Latina women yielded more than expected periviable births. These findings support the argument that the prospect of anti-immigrant policies promised by the Trump campaign sufficiently stressed Latina women to affect the timing of birth.
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