Community context, acculturation and low-birth-weight risk among Arab Americans: evidence from the Arab–American birth-outcomes study
- 1Department of Epidemiology, Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
- 2University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
- 3Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
- 4Center for Global Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
- Correspondence to Mr Abdulrahman M El-Sayed, Department of Epidemiology, 109 Observatory Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; elabdul{at}umich.edu
- Accepted 16 May 2009
- Published Online First 19 August 2009
Abstract
Background An assessment was made as to whether maternal residence in areas with high Arab–American concentrations, hence with expected low acculturation for this ethnic group, was associated with low-birth-weight (<2500 g) (LBW) risk among Arab-ethnicity mothers (AEM).
Methods Data on all births in Michigan from 2000 to 2005 were collected. Bivariate χ2 tests and multivariable logistic regression models were used to assess the relation between residence in areas with a high Arab–American concentration and risk for LBW among AEM. As a control, analyses were replicated among non-Arab white mothers.
Results Both residence in Dearborn (OR=0.85, 95% CI 0.75 to 0.97), the city with the highest Arab–American concentration in the USA, and residence in 48126 (OR=0.81, 95% CI 0.71 to 0.93), the zip code with the highest concentration of AEM in Dearborn, were associated with a lower risk for LBW compared with residence in the rest of Michigan in multivariable models adjusted for potential confounders. Neither residence in Dearborn nor residence in 48126 was associated with LBW risk among non-Arab white mothers.
Conclusions Residence in areas with high Arab–American concentrations was associated with a lower LBW risk among AEM. Future work should directly measure acculturation, a plausible mediator of this observed relation.
- Arab–American
- low birth weight
- community context
- birth outcomes
- ethnicity
- births SI
- community groups
- ethnic minorities
Footnotes
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Supplementary material is published online only at http://jech.bmj.com/content/vol64/issue2
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Funding NIH.
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Competing interests None.
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Ethics approval Ethics approval was provided by the Health Science Institutional Review Board of the University of Michigan and the Institutional Review Board of the Michigan Department of Community Health.
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Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
