Pregnancy health and perinatal outcomes among Pacific Islander women in the United States and US Affiliated Pacific Islands: Protocol for a scoping review.

Rachel Suss,Kendall J Arslanian,Madison Mahoney,Nicola L Hawley,Kate Nyhan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0262010

Rachel Suss, Kendall J Arslanian + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262010

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Jan 18, 2022
Citations: 1	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Yale University, Helen Hay Whitney Foundation

Abstract

This scoping review examines the literature on pregnancy and perinatal outcomes among Pacific Islander women in the United States (U.S.) and U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. Our aim was to identify research that disaggregated Pacific Islanders from other population groups. We conducted a systematic search of MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), and PsycINFO (Ovid) databases and a hand-search of grey literature. Forty-eight articles published between January 2010 and June 2020 were included. The majority of studies were conducted in Hawaii and utilized clinical record data. Infant outcomes were more commonly reported than maternal outcomes. We highlighted several limitations of the existing literature that included aggregation of Pacific Islanders with Asian American and other ethnic groups; limited comparison between Pacific Islander sub-groups; inadequate definitions of the nationality and ethnic composition of Pacific Islander groups; a lack of hypothesis-driven primary data collection and clinical trials; and underrepresentation of Pacific Islanders in population-based studies. Researchers should address these limitations to improve pregnancy and perinatal outcomes among Pacific Islanders, who comprise the second fastest growing ethnic minority in the U.S.

Highlights

In recent years, the United States (U.S.) has garnered global attention for having the worst maternal health outcomes of any developed country
Studies were limited to those conducted with Pacific Islanders living in the U.S and U.S Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPIs), which include American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI)
Where comparisons were made between Pacific Islanders and other populations we reported comparisons with the primary reference group used by the original study authors

Summary

Introduction

The United States (U.S.) has garnered global attention for having the worst maternal health outcomes of any developed country. The only country whose maternal mortality rate is rising, the U.S maternal mortality rate more than doubled from 10.3 per 100,000 live births in 1991 to 23.8 in 2014 [1, 2] and over two-thirds of the 700 deaths from pregnancyrelated complications in the U.S annually are avoidable [3]. Perinatal health in US Pacific Islander women

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