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Birth outcomes in Colorado's undocumented immigrant population

BACKGROUND: The birth outcomes of undocumented women have not been systematically studied on a large scale. The growing number of undocumented women giving birth in the United States has important implications for clinical care and public health policy. The objective of this study was to describe bi...

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Autores principales: Reed, Mary M, Westfall, John M, Bublitz, Caroline, Battaglia, Catherine, Fickenscher, Alexandra
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2005
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1262728/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16202159
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-100
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author Reed, Mary M
Westfall, John M
Bublitz, Caroline
Battaglia, Catherine
Fickenscher, Alexandra
author_facet Reed, Mary M
Westfall, John M
Bublitz, Caroline
Battaglia, Catherine
Fickenscher, Alexandra
author_sort Reed, Mary M
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The birth outcomes of undocumented women have not been systematically studied on a large scale. The growing number of undocumented women giving birth in the United States has important implications for clinical care and public health policy. The objective of this study was to describe birth outcomes of undocumented immigrants in Colorado. METHODS: Retrospective descriptive study of singleton births to 5961 undocumented women using birth certificate data for 1998–1999. RESULTS: Undocumented mothers were younger, less educated, and more likely to be single. They had higher rates of anemia, were less likely to gain enough weight, and less likely to receive early prenatal care. They were much less likely to use alcohol or tobacco. Undocumented women had a lower rate of low birth weight (5.3% v 6.5%, P < .001) or preterm infants (12.9% v 14.5%; p = .001). Undocumented women experienced higher rates of labor complications including excessive bleeding (2.3% v 0.8%, p < .001) and fetal distress (8.7% v 3.6%, p < .001). CONCLUSION: Undocumented women have lower rates of preterm delivery and low birth weight infants, but higher rates of pregnancy related risk factors. Higher prevalence of some risk factors which are amenable to medical intervention reveals the need for improved prenatal care in this group.
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spelling pubmed-12627282005-10-22 Birth outcomes in Colorado's undocumented immigrant population Reed, Mary M Westfall, John M Bublitz, Caroline Battaglia, Catherine Fickenscher, Alexandra BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: The birth outcomes of undocumented women have not been systematically studied on a large scale. The growing number of undocumented women giving birth in the United States has important implications for clinical care and public health policy. The objective of this study was to describe birth outcomes of undocumented immigrants in Colorado. METHODS: Retrospective descriptive study of singleton births to 5961 undocumented women using birth certificate data for 1998–1999. RESULTS: Undocumented mothers were younger, less educated, and more likely to be single. They had higher rates of anemia, were less likely to gain enough weight, and less likely to receive early prenatal care. They were much less likely to use alcohol or tobacco. Undocumented women had a lower rate of low birth weight (5.3% v 6.5%, P < .001) or preterm infants (12.9% v 14.5%; p = .001). Undocumented women experienced higher rates of labor complications including excessive bleeding (2.3% v 0.8%, p < .001) and fetal distress (8.7% v 3.6%, p < .001). CONCLUSION: Undocumented women have lower rates of preterm delivery and low birth weight infants, but higher rates of pregnancy related risk factors. Higher prevalence of some risk factors which are amenable to medical intervention reveals the need for improved prenatal care in this group. BioMed Central 2005-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC1262728/ /pubmed/16202159 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-100 Text en Copyright © 2005 Reed et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Reed, Mary M
Westfall, John M
Bublitz, Caroline
Battaglia, Catherine
Fickenscher, Alexandra
Birth outcomes in Colorado's undocumented immigrant population
title Birth outcomes in Colorado's undocumented immigrant population
title_full Birth outcomes in Colorado's undocumented immigrant population
title_fullStr Birth outcomes in Colorado's undocumented immigrant population
title_full_unstemmed Birth outcomes in Colorado's undocumented immigrant population
title_short Birth outcomes in Colorado's undocumented immigrant population
title_sort birth outcomes in colorado's undocumented immigrant population
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1262728/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16202159
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-100
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