Journal Article

Birth and prenatal care outcomes of Latina mothers in the Trump era: Analysis by nativity and country/region of origin

Dollar, Nathan T., Gutierrez, Carmen

2023

Overview

We examined whether and how birth outcomes and prenatal care utilization among Latina mothers changed over time across years associated with the Trump sociopolitical environment, using restricted-use birth records from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). To assess potential variation among subpopulations, we disaggregated the analyses by maternal nativity and country/region of origin. Our results indicate that both US- and foreign-born Latina mothers experienced increasingly higher risks of delivering low birthweight (LBW) and preterm birth (PTB) infants over the years associated with Trump’s political career. Among foreign-born Latinas, adverse birth outcomes increased significantly among mothers from Mexico and Central America but not among mothers from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and South America. Levels of inadequate prenatal care utilization remained largely unchanged among groups who saw increases in LBW and PTB, suggesting that changes in prenatal care did not generally explain the observed worsening of birth outcomes among Latina mothers during the Trump era. Results from this study draw attention to the possibility that the Trump era may have represented a source of chronic stress among the Latinx population in the US and add to the growing body of literature linking racism and xenophobia in the sociopolitical environment to declines in health among Latinx people, especially among targeted groups from Mexico and Central America.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Anxiety / Biology and Life Sciences / Birth records / Birth weight / Births / Careers / Childbirth & labor / Chronic illnesses / Clinical outcomes / Discrimination / Election results / Environmental statistics / Evaluation / Female / Health aspects / Hispanic American women / Hispanic Americans / Hispanic or Latino / Humans / Immigrants / Immigration / Infant / Infant, Low Birth Weight / Infant, Newborn / Infants / Latin American cultural groups / Low birth weight / Maternal and infant welfare / Medicine and Health Sciences / Mental health / Mothers / Parturition / People and Places / Political campaigns / Politics / Pregnancy / Pregnant women / Premature babies / Premature birth / Premature Birth - epidemiology / Prenatal Care / Presidential elections / Prevention / Racism / Regions / Rhetoric / Social Sciences / Sociopolitical factors / Speeches / Statistical analysis / Statistics / Stress / Subpopulations / United States / Womens health / Xenophobia