maternal health

First, some important pieces related to hurricanes: Cindy George in the Houston Chronicle: City's underserved population foresees uneven recovery Aaron Caroll & Austin Frakt at the New York Times' Upshot: The Long-Term Health Consequences of Hurricane Harvey Lisa Rein in the Washington Post: Trump would slash disaster funding to the very agencies he’s praising for Harvey response Adrian Florido at NPR: Houston's Undocumented Residents Left Destitute And Fearful In Harvey's Wake Vann R. Newkirk II in The Atlantic: The Legal Crises to Follow in Hurricane Harvey's Wake Sheri Fink &…

By now, the enormity of America’s opioid abuse and overdose epidemic is common knowledge. With 78 Americans dying every day from an opioid overdose and with enough painkillers prescribed to give just about every U.S. adult their own bottle of pills, there’s hardly a community that’s gone untouched by the deadly problem. And a new study reminds us that we’ll be dealing with the aftermath far into the future. The study, published in the form of a “research letter” in JAMA Pediatrics, examined rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), a condition that occurs when babies are exposed to drugs…

Just in time for Mother’s Day comes more good news from the Affordable Care Act: the rate of uninsured moms caring for kids younger than 19 has dropped to its lowest rate in nearly 20 years. According to a new analysis from the Urban Institute released this month, the rate of uninsured moms fell 3.8 percentage points between 2013 and 2014 — that’s a decline about three times as large as any of the previous year-to-year changes observed since 1997. In sheer numbers, that means about 1.6 million moms gained health insurance. To give you even more perspective, consider that uninsurance rates…

About one in every 10 U.S. children is living with asthma — that’s closing in on 7 million kids. And while we have a good handle on what triggers asthma attacks and exacerbates respiratory symptoms, exactly what causes asthma in the first place is still somewhat of a mystery. However, new research points to some possible new culprits that are difficult, if not nearly impossible, to avoid. Those culprits are phthalates, ubiquitous chemicals found in just about everything, from food packaging to shower curtains to vinyl flooring to personal care products such as fragrances and shampoos. (…

Forget pink or blue. It turns out that the best color for baby may be green. In a study recently published in Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers found that mothers living in neighborhoods with plenty of greenness — grass, trees and other types of lush vegetation — were more likely to carry their pregnancies to full term and deliver babies at healthier weights. Specifically, the study found that very pre-term births were 20 percent lower and moderate pre-term births were 13 percent lower among mothers living in greener neighborhoods. Also, babies from greener neighborhoods were…

by V. Tinney, J. Paulson, and E. Webb In recent months, spikes in birth defects, and stillborn and neonatal deaths in drilling-dense regions of Colorado and Utah has raised the attention of local communities, researchers, and public health officials. There is still much to be studied to be able to determine if there is in fact a causal link between hydraulic fracturing and adverse outcomes for infants and children. However, preliminary research is starting to suggest that there very well could be a connection. Researchers McKenzie et al. in a recent study released in February 2014, observed…

I wrote last week about the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which the Affordable Care Act (ACA) created to invest in improving overall population health – with the hope that improved health will help slow the growth of healthcare costs. Another provision of the ACA that aims to reduce future healthcare costs is “Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Programs” (Section 2951). Three studies published in the latest supplemental issue of the American Journal of Public Health address this type of program. Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) programs send…

“There’s a lot we don’t know about preterm birth and we know even less about the disparities in those births.” Those are words from Ondine von Ehrenstein, an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, who recently examined the links between occupational exposures and preterm birth rates among Hispanic women. Perhaps not surprisingly to those in the public health world, von Ehrenstein and her research colleagues did find that Hispanic women are at particular risk for preterm birth associated with certain occupational…

Mahabouba*, age 14, was sold into a marriage as a second wife to a man 50 almost years her senior. Raped and beaten repeatedly, she ended up pregnant, finally succeeding in running away 7 months into her pregnancy. Fleeing to the nearby town, she found that the people there threatened to return her to her husband, so she ran back to her native village in Ethiopia. However, her immediate family no longer lived there. An uncle eventually took pity on her and provided her with housing. When Mahabouba went into labor, lacking resources, she tried to deliver her baby herself. Her pelvis was still…