Children and Families

Longstanding concern in the health research community over racial disparities in maternal health is growing stronger. Large gaps in access to and the quality of perinatal care - the crucial information and screenings recommended before, during, and after pregnancy - exist within the Latinx community.

Our study described below addresses how two “tough on crime” laws–Three Strikes and Truth in Sentencing–may have impacted birth outcomes of Black women between 1984 and 2004. While research exists on the role state incarceration policies play in increasing mass incarceration in the U.S., their role in shaping population health and health disparities have remained largely unknown.

This study examines the persistent disparities in birth outcomes between infants born to Black and white mothers in the United States from 2007 to 2018. The research focuses on understanding how structural racism, neighborhood deprivation, and maternal characteristics contribute to these inequities.

The body of serious research into women’s health now includes many reliable studies that help us understand the unique biological factors that affect women. There is also intriguing research on the wide range of social determinants impacting the health of women and girls.

This post originally appeared on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Blog.

In 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) began the process of ameliorating centuries of prejudice, racism, and deliberate attempts to strip Indigenous peoples of their culture and heritage. The legislation created legal boundaries to protect Indian families and communities from the loss of their children.

Severe maternal morbidity (SMM)—defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as unintended outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term consequences to a woman’s health—is a major determinant of maternal mortality. Each year 15 of every 1,000 people hospitalized for a delivery experience SMM. In addition to adverse health outcomes, SMM can lead to disruptions in mother-infant bonding, which can compromise children’s social and emotional development, and confers substantial economic costs to families, communities, and insurers including Medicaid.

Childhood poverty is associated with worse health outcomes, including poor physical and cognitive development, and can adversely influence social and health outcomes in later life. While there is increasing interest in policies to address childhood poverty, limited research exists on whether current U.S. poverty alleviation policies, including the largest such program, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), improve children's health.

Since the early 1990s, Medicaid has been critical in providing insurance coverage for pregnant women with low incomes in the United States - pregnancy-related Medicaid coverage is available to women with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level in most states. Building on existing studies tracking changes in Medicaid coverage and uninsurance under the law, researchers Emily M. Johnston, Stacey McMorrow, Clara Alvarez Caraveo and Lisa Dubay examined data for new mothers with Medicaid-covered prenatal care in this study published in Health Affairs.

The period before pregnancy is critically important for the health of a woman and her infant, yet not all women have access to health insurance during this time. Rebecca Myerson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Samuel Crawford of the University of Southern California, and Laura R. Wherry of New York University evaluated whether increased access to health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansions affected ten preconception health indicators, including the prevalence of chronic conditions and health behaviors, birth control use and pregnancy intention, and the receipt of preconception health services.

In this report, P4A researchers Amelia Coffey, Eleanor Lauderback and H. Elizabeth Peters, along with their partners at the University of Oregon’s Department of Sociology Lola Loustaunau, Larissa Petrucci, Ellen Scott and Lina Stepick, examine Oregon’s implementation of S.B. 828, the first statewide predictive scheduling law in the nation, in its first year.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of the largest safety net programs in the United States. In 2019, the EITC reached 25 million tax filers at a total cost of $63 billion. Using variation in the federal and state EITC, Breno Braga, Fredric Blavin and Anuj Gangopadhyaya evaluated the long-term impact of EITC exposure during childhood on the health of young adults.