Deaths due to police violence, which already affect black communities differently, negatively affect the health of mothers and babies in the neighborhood where they occur during pregnancy (at least in California), according to a new study.
Furthermore, this correlation is more robust when the victim of lethal violence and the biological mother/father They were both black.
3.8 million women evaluated
The study, conducted by researchers at the UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBI-CA) and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, studied records of 3.8 million pregnant women to assess whether lethal police violence occurring in their neighborhood during pregnancy was associated with cases of early, moderate, or late preterm birth.
Researchers analyzed birth records from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). from 2007 to 2015, using the addresses of the biological parents to determine the parents' census area of residence. And the recorded cases of lethal violence were matched: specifically, they matched the measures of police violence with the time interval of the pregnancies, using as a control group residents of the same census tract who did not experience police violence during their pregnancy.
It was correlated so that black women have 80% increased risk of preterm birth between 32 and 33 weeks of pregnancy if a black person living in your neighborhood is killed by police while pregnant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists the preterm birth rate among black women as 50% higher than the preterm birth rate among white or Latina women.
According to the analysis, neighborhoods where at least one incident of fatal police violence occurred tended to be where the biological parents were black or Latino, had less than a high school education and had public insurance, compared to all births in California.
He study was published on March 10, 2021 in the magazine Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology.
The UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBI) is a research company whose mission is to eliminate racial disparities in preterm birth and improve health outcomes for babies born too soon through research, partnerships, and education based on community wisdom.
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The news
Lethal Police Violence Increases Risk of Premature Birth for Mothers Living Near Neighborhoods
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.