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Black women have 80% higher risk of preterm birth between 32 and 33 weeks of pregnancy if a Black person who lives in their neighborhood is killed by police during the pregnancy, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley.
The study by scientists at the UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBI-CA) and UC Berkeley School of Public Health, studied the records of 3.8 million pregnant women to assess whether fatal police violence occurring in their neighborhood during pregnancy was associated with extremely early, early, moderate or late preterm delivery.
"Our findings suggest that deaths due to police violence, which already differentially affect Black and Brown communities, adversely affect the health of mothers and babies during pregnancy," said first author Dana Goin, PhD, post-doctoral scholar in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. "In addition, we observed the strongest associations with preterm birth when the victim of the lethal violence and the mother/birth parent were both Black."