https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uoc--fpv031121.php
News Release 11-Mar-2021
University of California - San Francisco
Black women have 80% higher risk of preterm birth between 32 and 33 weeks of pregnancy if a Black person who lives in their neighborhood is killed by police during the pregnancy, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley.
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"Our findings suggest that deaths due to police violence, which already differentially affect Black and Brown communities, adversely affect the health of mothers and babies during pregnancy," said first author Dana Goin, PhD, post-doctoral scholar in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. "In addition, we observed the strongest associations with preterm birth when the victim of the lethal violence and the mother/birth parent were both Black."
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The researchers also discovered that the associations of fatal police violence with preterm birth were stronger among female infants. Since male fetuses are more sensitive to stress during pregnancy, it is plausible that male fetuses exposed to police violence may have been more likely than female fetuses to be miscarried earlier in the pregnancy, said Goin, who intends to explore this possibility further in a subsequent study.
"Our research provides evidence that policing practices that differentially harm Black people in California can also contribute to their disproportionate risk for preterm delivery," she said. "This work contributes to the evidence that additional forms of stress and hardship experienced from racism and institutional violence significantly affect their health and the health of the next generation."
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