Stress, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and African-American females.
Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: INTRODUCTION African Americans continue to trail their white counterparts in having disproportionately higher rates of maternal mortality' and infant mortality.2 While the reasons for these outcomes are as complex as they are varied, this paper will present information on the role stress plays in selected adverse pregnancy outcomes, or APO (e.g., very low birthweight (LBW), preterm births, pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality), in the U.S. population in general and in the African-American population in particular. While a reciprocal relationship may exist between stress and APOs, the information presented in this article relates more to the direct or indirect relationship between stress and APOs, and not the other way around. In order to facilitate a discussion around this complex stress-APO relationship, a sociopsychophysiological model (SPPM) of the stress process is used as a conceptual guide. Although social risk factors are increasingly being studied, they must include environmental stressors, which shape individual vulnerability and resistance to risk factors for health.3 Various epidemiological studies4'5 have examined whether the racial/ethnic disparities in APOs (preterm and LBW) can be explained by maternal age, education, lifestyle, and socioeconomic status. However, these factors only account for a small amount of
Source: PubMed Central
Authors: Ivor Lensworth Livingston, Jane A Otado, Carmen Warren
Institution: Howard University
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W102304056