Health outcomes for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children born preterm, low birthweight or small for gestational age: A nationwide cohort study

Elizabeth M Westrupp, Fabrizio D'Esposito, Jane Freemantle, Fiona K Mensah and Jan M Nicholson

PLOS ONE, 2019, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: Objective: To examine health outcomes in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children experiencing perinatal risk and identify protective factors in the antenatal period. Methods: Baby/Child cohorts of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, born 2001–2008, across four annual surveys (aged 0–8 years, N = 1483). Children with ‘mild’ and ‘moderate-to-high’ perinatal risk were compared to children born normal weight at term for maternal-rated global health and disability, and body-mass-index measured by the interviewer. Results: Almost one third of children had experienced mild (22%) or moderate-to-high perinatal risk (8%). Perinatal risk was associated with lower body-mass-index z-scores (regression coefficients adjusted for pregnancy and environment factors: mild = -0.21, 95% CI = -0.34, -0.07; moderate-to-high = -0.42, 95% CI = -0.63, -0.21). Moderate-to-high perinatal risk was associated with poorer global health, with associations becoming less evident in models adjusted for pregnancy and environment factors; but not evident for disability. A range of protective factors, including cultural-based resilience and smoking cessation, were associated with lower risk of adverse outcomes. Conclusions: Perinatal risks are associated with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait children experiencing adverse health particularly lower body weight. Cultural-based resilience and smoking cessation may be two modifiable pathways to ameliorating health problems associated with perinatal risk.

Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0212130 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 12130&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0212130

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212130

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().