Sponsor
This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), including the funding for the Consortium on Safe Labor (Contract No. HHSN267200603425C) and the Air Quality and Reproductive Health Study (Contract No. HHSN275200800002I, Task Order No. HHSN27500008). This paper has been cleared for publication by the NICHD but the funding source had no role in the design, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the manuscript. The ZIP code–HRR crosswalk data was obtained from The Dartmouth Atlas, which is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Dartmouth Clinical and Translational Science Institute, under the award number UL1TR001086 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Published In
Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
4-2020
Subjects
Pacific Islander Americans -- Health and hygiene, Asian Americans -- Health and hygiene, Diabetes in pregnancy, Pacific Islander Americans -- Health behavior, Asian Americans -- Health behvior, Prematurely born children
Abstract
Objectives—Ethnic enclaves are ethnically, spatially, and socially distinct communities that may promote health through access to culturally appropriate resources and reduced exposure to discrimination. This study examined ethnic enclave residence and pregnancy outcomes among Asian/Pacific Islander (API) women in the USA.
Design—We examined 9206 API births in the Consortium on Safe Labor (2002–2008). Ethnic enclaves were defined as hospital regions with high percentage of API residents (> 4%), high dissimilarity index (> 0.41; distribution of API and white residents within a geographic area), and high isolation index (> 0.03; interaction between API and white residents in an area). Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), preterm birth (PTB), small for gestational age (SGA), and smoking and alcohol use during pregnancy were reported in medical records supplemented with ICD-9 codes. Hierarchical logistic regression models estimated associations between ethnic enclaves and pregnancy outcomes, adjusted for maternal factors, area-level poverty, and air pollution.
Results—Women in enclaves had lower odds of GDM (OR 0.61; 95%CI 0.45, 0.82), PTB (OR 0.74; 95%CI 0.56, 0.99), and SGA (OR 0.68; 95%CI 0.52, 0.89) compared with women in non-enclaves. Prenatal smoking and alcohol use appeared less likely in enclaves, but estimates were imprecise. Within enclaves, about 10.5% of homes speak an API language, compared with 6.0% in non-enclaves. The mean percent of foreign-born API populations was 67.4% in enclaves and 68.8% in non-enclaves.
Conclusions—API women residing in ethnic enclaves had better pregnancy outcomes than API women residing in non-enclave areas. Access to culturally appropriate social supports and resources may be important for health promotion among API populations.
Rights
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities . The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-019-00650-4.
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Part of Springer Nature.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1007/s40615-019-00650-4
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/32857
Publisher
Springer
Citation Details
Williams, A. D., Messer, L. C., Kanner, J., Ha, S., Grantz, K. L., & Mendola, P. (2020). Ethnic Enclaves and Pregnancy and Behavior Outcomes Among Asian/Pacific Islanders in the USA. Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities, 7(2), 224-233.