Among women’s health concerns, reproductive issues, both prenatal and postpartum, hold particular prominence. Yet despite the many programs dedicated to improving women’s reproductive health, maternal and infant morbidity and mortality rates in minority communities remain unchanged—or have increased. Confronting this alarming statistic head-on, Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes is the first book systematically examining public health interventions designed toward meeting this important and elusive goal. Its contributors offer the best thinking and practice on this complicated topic, clarifying the relationship between evidence-based medicine and evidence-based public health and its potential for increasing parity, considering interventions in the multiple contexts of women’s lives, reviewing the evidence base for each program or initiative featured, and describing methodologies for evaluating interventions. The resulting volume advocates for an integrative lifespan approach, including topics related to: Family planning STI and HIV/AIDS screening and treatment Smoking cessation and reducing exposure to environmental smoke Preconceptional well-woman care Depression screening and treatment Labor/delivery approaches and intrapartum care Emerging prenatal care interventions, from centering pregnancy to doula support For professionals and graduate students in psychiatry, psychology, sociology, women’s health, and public health, Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes reframes a set of ongoing issues and guides the reader toward state-of-the-art solutions.

Among women’s health concerns, reproductive issues, both prenatal and postpartum, hold particular prominence. Yet despite the many programs dedicated to improving women’s reproductive health, maternal and infant morbidity and mortality rates in minority communities remain unchanged—or have increased. Confronting this alarming statistic head-on, Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes is the first book systematically examining public health interventions designed toward meeting this important and elusive goal. Its contributors offer the best thinking and practice on this complicated topic, clarifying the relationship between evidence-based medicine and evidence-based public health and its potential for increasing parity, considering interventions in the multiple contexts of women’s lives, reviewing the evidence base for each program or initiative featured, and describing methodologies for evaluating interventions. The resulting volume advocates for an integrative lifespan approach, including topics related to: Family planning STI and HIV/AIDS screening and treatment Smoking cessation and reducing exposure to environmental smoke Preconceptional well-woman care Depression screening and treatment Labor/delivery approaches and intrapartum care Emerging prenatal care interventions, from centering pregnancy to doula support For professionals and graduate students in psychiatry, psychology, sociology, women’s health, and public health, Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes reframes a set of ongoing issues and guides the reader toward state-of-the-art solutions.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

The delivery of high quality and equitable care for both mothers and newborns is complex and requires efforts across many sectors. The United States spends more on childbirth than any other country in the world, yet outcomes are worse than other high-resource countries, and even worse for Black and Native American women. There are a variety of factors that influence childbirth, including social determinants such as income, educational levels, access to care, financing, transportation, structural racism and geographic variability in birth settings. It is important to reevaluate the United States' approach to maternal and newborn care through the lens of these factors across multiple disciplines. Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, and Choice reviews and evaluates maternal and newborn care in the United States, the epidemiology of social and clinical risks in pregnancy and childbirth, birth settings research, and access to and choice of birth settings.

Children are the foundation of the United States, and supporting them is a key component of building a successful future. However, millions of children face health inequities that compromise their development, well-being, and long-term outcomes, despite substantial scientific evidence about how those adversities contribute to poor health. Advancements in neurobiological and socio-behavioral science show that critical biological systems develop in the prenatal through early childhood periods, and neurobiological development is extremely responsive to environmental influences during these stages. Consequently, social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors significantly affect a child's health ecosystem and ability to thrive throughout adulthood. Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity builds upon and updates research from Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity (2017) and From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development (2000). This report provides a brief overview of stressors that affect childhood development and health, a framework for applying current brain and development science to the real world, a roadmap for implementing tailored interventions, and recommendations about improving systems to better align with our understanding of the significant impact of health equity.

A troubling study of the role that medical racism plays in the lives of black women who have given birth to premature and low birth weight infants Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income white women in the United States. Dána-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery. While poor and low-income black women are often the “mascots” of premature birth outcomes, this book focuses on professional black women, who are just as likely to give birth prematurely. Drawing on an impressive array of interviews with nearly fifty mothers, fathers, neonatologists, nurses, midwives, and reproductive justice advocates, Dána-Ain Davis argues that events leading up to an infant’s arrival in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and the parents’ experiences while they are in the NICU, reveal subtle but pernicious forms of racism that confound the perceived class dynamics that are frequently understood to be a central factor of premature birth. The book argues not only that medical racism persists and must be considered when examining adverse outcomes—as well as upsetting experiences for parents—but also that NICUs and life-saving technologies should not be the only strategies for improving the outcomes for black pregnant women and their babies. Davis makes the case for other avenues, such as community-based birthing projects, doulas, and midwives, that support women during pregnancy and labor are just as important and effective in avoiding premature births and mortality.

Have gaps in health outcomes between the poor and better off grown? Are they larger in one country than another? Are health sector subsidies more equally distributed in some countries than others? Are health care payments more progressive in one health care financing system than another? What are catastrophic payments and how can they be measured? How far do health care payments impoverish households? Answering questions such as these requires quantitative analysis. This in turn depends on a clear understanding of how to measure key variables in the analysis, such as health outcomes, health expenditures, need, and living standards. It also requires set quantitative methods for measuring inequality and inequity, progressivity, catastrophic expenditures, poverty impact, and so on. This book provides an overview of the key issues that arise in the measurement of health variables and living standards, outlines and explains essential tools and methods for distributional analysis, and, using worked examples, shows how these tools and methods can be applied in the health sector. The book seeks to provide the reader with both a solid grasp of the principles underpinning distributional analysis, while at the same time offering hands-on guidance on how to move from principles to practice.