County Socioeconomic Deprivation and Preterm Birth Risk Between White and Black Mothers in Georgia, USA

Abstract

Past studies have reported the association between living in a socioeconomically deprived neighborhood and elevated preterm births (PtB) risk after adjusting certain individual level confounders. This article examined the association between county-level deprivation and PtB risk of three stratified racial groups, white, black, and the others. The author built two level random intercept logistic regression models using 112,589 single live births retrieved from vital statistics record in Georgia, USA in 2010. Although county level deprivation was found to be insignificant for PtB risk for the entire study population, it had a significant yet modest effect on magnifying the PtB risk of black women (The odds ratio (OR) = 1.063,95% CI = 1.02, 1.12). In addition, the Median Odds Ratio (MOR) (1.229) indicated a weak neighborhood effect on PtB risk and the Interval Odds Ratio (IOR)-80% (0.68-1.49) suggested large unaccounted county-level heterogeneity. Future research will include more confounders at both levels in analysis as well as addressing the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP).