Preterm Birth Rates Higher in Black Patients

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Non-Hispanic Black individuals have a significantly higher rate of preterm births than non-Hispanic Whites, according to a study published in American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The study included 509,890 live births among non-Hispanic Blacks and 1,790,350 live births among non-Hispanic Whites reported to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in 2019.
Demographic risk factors were maternal age and number of births.
Prepregnancy cardiovascular risk factors were hypertension, diabetes, BMI, and smoking status.
Socioeconomic risk factors were education, private insurance, and receipt of prenatal care.

Almost 12% of non-Hispanic Blacks in the study experienced a preterm birth compared with 7% of non-Hispanic Whites.
Prepregnancy cardiovascular risk factors contributed to 7.8% of the difference in rates of preterm delivery.
Socioeconomic risk factors contributed to 21.3% of the difference in preterm birth rates.
Non-Hispanic Blacks tended to be younger than their White counterparts and were more likely to have hypertension, diabetes, and obesity before pregnancy.

“These findings may inform public health interventions to promote and reduce racial disparities in health beginning at birth,” according to the researchers.

Sadiya S. Khan, MD, MSc, FAAC, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, is the corresponding author. The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the National Institutes of Health.

Socioeconomic factors were limited and cardiovascular factors were self-reported, which may have introduced inaccuracies. Gestational age at birth may have been miscoded in the NCHS data. The study was limited to the risk factors included in the model researchers used.