United States: Preterm birth rates in the last decade in the US rose by more than 10%, according to one of the largest studies of births published in the last twelve months.
This occurred at the same time as some of the conditions increasing the probability for an early delivery also increased those for diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases, and poor mental health as well as the reduction in protective factors.
Racial and economic inequalities are still there even today.
As reported by the HealthDay, “These patterns and changes in risk factors should be setting off alarm bells,” said lead study author Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski from NYU Rory Meyers College of Medicine in New York City.
Preterm or low birth weight infants defined as those delivered before the 37th week of pregnancy have a higher risk of becoming ill, having learning and emotional problems, and possibly dying.
A number of the preconditions that researchers associated with the increased rate of preterm birth include smoking by pregnant women or have diabetes, hypertension, or an infection. Systematic racism patterns that now span the years also manifested in the new studies.
“We found huge disparities in the ways that being a black or First Nations pregnant person is like compared with a white person of middle or greater means”, Jelliffe-Pawlowski said: the former is like being an animal in the zoo to the latter.
To do this, her team analyzed data from 5.4 million births (singletons only) in California from 2011 to 2022.
Sex differences in preterm births increased the same year and throughout the rest of the study, where preterm births went up from 6.8% in 2011 to 7.5% in 2022 paralleled to a national trend between 2014 and 2022.
Across almost all groups, rates increased; however, Black women with public insurance had the highest rate (11.3%) and white mothers, with private insurance having the lowest rate at 5.8%. While the rates declined somewhat among Black women who were privately insured from the 9.1 percent to 8.8 percent and they remained higher than rates among white mothers.
Among Native Americans with private insurance preterm births rose from 6.4 percent to 9.5 percent and among the low-income women and the parental care and the participation in the supplemental nutrition program for the women and the children who are called WIC were protective but the participation across the most low-income groups fell over the study period researchers found.