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The Role of Environmental Hazards in Premature Birth Workshop Summary (2003) / Chapter Skim
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5. Preterm Birth - Social Implications
Pages 62-67

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From page 62...
... In addition, she suggested, it is worth investigating factors that might have been present before the pregnancy was initiated to try to identify social predictors of preterm birth, to explore the concept of women becoming weathered or worn down by stress, to assess whether these social predictors endure over time, and to differentiate between the effects of chronic and acute stress.
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From page 63...
... However, said Fernando Guerra, San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, some of the conditions revealed in the data about the health of Mexican Americans, related to nutrition, diet, life-style, risk-taking behavior, domestic violence, displacement from the security of family and home, conditions of overcrowding, and lack of attachment to strong religious ties, indicate that these are stressors that must be considered and studied further. Epidemiological Model of Stress Carol Rowland Hogue of Emory University suggested that the classic "host, environment, agent" triangle of epidemiological causality can illustrate what might be included in a more comprehensive test of the stress-preterm delivery hypothesis.
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From page 64...
... In experimental studies of African-American and Caucasian participants, blood pressure following cardiovascular activity, at rest, and after a stressful stimulus was greater in African Americans. This increased cardiovascular reactivity among African Americans does not appear to be associated with familial history of hypertension, suggesting that individuals' exposure history, rather than genetic differences, may explain differences in host susceptibility to stressors.
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From page 65...
... A nationally representative phone survey of 8,000 women ages 18 or older conducted from 1995 to 1996 by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked women about their lifetime exposures to violence. The survey found that one out of every two women had been physically assaulted at some point in her life, either as a child by an adult caretaker or as an adult (Tjaden et al., 2000~.
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From page 66...
... Types of stressful environmental factors include those associated with gender, socioeconomic status, and race or ethnicity. Several years ago, a series of studies found that maternal stress during pregnancy was associated with poor pregnancy outcomes, including preterm delivery, but only for women who had fewer social supports available to buffer stressful events.
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From page 67...
... Women's education level is a predictor of low birth weight births across racial and age lines. Janet Rich-Edwards COPING STRATEGIES Coping strategies, in contrast to coping resources, describe specific behavioral or cognitive attempts to manage stressful demands.
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Key Terms

  • preterm delivery
  • birth weight
  • pregnancy outcomes
  • social environment
  • low birth

  • poor pregnancy
  • mexican americans
  • coping strategies
  • pregnant women
  • environmental hazards

  • life events
  • social predictors
  • coping resources
  • pregnancy anxiety
  • stressful events

  • interventions aimed
  • african americans
  • lengthened gestation
  • increasing social
  • factors include

  • weight babies
  • repressive coping
  • acute stress
  • emory university
  • household income

  • age lines
  • antonio metropolitan
  • found consistently
  • social stressors
  • social class


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