American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 152, Issue 5 413-419, Copyright © 2000 by Oxford University Press
AF Saftlas, LM Koonin and HK Atrash
The authors conducted a nested case-control study to determine whether the
fourfold increased risk of pregnancy-related mortality for US Black women
compared with White women can be explained by racial differences in
sociodemographic and reproductive factors. Cases were derived from a
national surveillance database of pregnancy-related deaths and were
restricted to White women (n = 840) and Black women (n = 448) whose
pregnancies resulted in a livebirth and who died of a pregnancy-related
cause between 1979 and 1986. Controls were derived from national natality
data and were randomly selected White women and Black women who delivered
live infants and did not die from a pregnancy-related cause (n = 5,437).
Simultaneous adjustment for risk factors by using logistic regression did
not explain the racial gap in pregnancy-related mortality. The largest
racial disparity occurred among women with the lowest risk of
pregnancy-related death: those of low to moderate parity who delivered
normal-birth-weight babies (adjusted odds ratio = 3.53, 95% confidence
interval: 2.9, 4.4). In contrast, no racial disparity was found among women
with the highest risk of pregnancy-related death: high-parity women who
delivered low-birth-weight babies. These findings indicate that
reproductive health care professionals need to develop strategies to reduce
pregnancy-related deaths among both high- and low- risk Black women.
ARTICLES
Racial disparity in pregnancy-related mortality associated with livebirth: can established risk factors explain it?
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA. audrey-saftlas@uiowa.edu
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