Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Messer, Lynne C.
• Kaufman, Jay S.
• Dole, Nancy
• Savitz, David A.
• Laraia, Barbara A.

Titel

Neighborhood Crime, Deprivation, and Preterm Birth

Ist Teil von

• Annals of epidemiology, 2006-06, Vol.16 (6), p.455-462

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2006

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Significant racial disparity in preterm birth (PTB; birth at <37 weeks' gestation) exists, poorly explained by Individual-level factors. This research explores whether neighborhood crime contributes to the racial disparity in PTB. Geocoded Wake County, NC, birth records and crime-report data for 1999 to 2001 were merged with US Census data (2000). Race-stratified logistic and multilevel logistic models produced odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for block-group violent, theft, property, and vice crime rates and singleton PTB. A total of 13,960 women resided in a 114-block-group crime area. Non-Hispanic black women were more likely than non-Hispanic white women to deliver preterm (12.8% versus 6.7%), live in economically deprived block groups (42.2% versus 19.3% in the highest deprivation quartile), and experience more crime (32.0% versus 3.8% in the highest violent-crime-rate quartile). Quartiles of violent, theft, property, and vice crimes were associated with PTB in unadjusted models. Living in very high violent-crime-rate block-group quartiles was suggestive of increased odds of PTB for white and black non-Hispanic women (OR = 1.5; 95% CI, 0.9–2.6; and OR = 1.4; 95% CI, 1.0–2.1, respectively) in adjusted models. Other crime effects were attenuated after adjustment. Differential neighborhood exposures may contribute to racial disparity in PTB.