DGHI member Lynne Messer's commentary on adverse birth outcomes and social context is published in The American Journal of Epidemiology. 

 

She says, "Weathering -- the cumulative burden of adverse psychosocialand economic circumstances on the bodies of minority women -- has been repeatedly described in epidemiologic studies. The most common application has been the documentation of rapidly increasingrisks of adverse birth outcomes as African-American women age. Previous work has been based largely on cross-sectional datathat aggregate women across a variety of socioeconomic circumstances. When more specific information about women's life-course socioeconomicstatus is taken into account, however, heterogeneity in the weathering experience of African-American women becomes more readily apparent... Clearly, a more complete accounting of social context helps to explain a lot of the birth outcome disparities we've become accustomed to find. "