Researchers from the Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania created a consortium to explore the effects the pandemic is having on different socioeconomic or demographic groups.
Credit: Max MesterResearchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia created a consortium to study the effects of COVID-19 on preterm birth and prenatal care.
The effort, led by Penn assistant professor of Pediatrics Heather Burris, is funded by $300,000 in grants to study the effect of COVID-19 on preterm birth and how this varies based on socioeconomic or demographic groups, WHYY reported. The consortium will include researchers from other universities, and the team will have access to nationwide de-identified data sets from patients insured by Highmark and Independence Blue Cross, who are partially funding the grants.
Preterm births are births occurring before 37 weeks of gestation, according to WHYY. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention found that the average rate of preterm birth among Black women is 14.4%, about 50% higher than the rates for white or Hispanic women.
Burris and her team are planning to use their funding to address the connection between the higher rates of preterm births in Black babies and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Perelman School of Medicine assistant professor of Pediatrics and Medicine Jaya Aysola and Burris told WHYY that there are structural policies, historical, social, and environmental factors that lead certain groups to have disproportionate burdens of disease, such as COVID-19. Similarly, there are many uncontrollable factors that influence preterm birth disparities.
In addition to understanding the conditions that contribute to the differences in population levels of preterm births, Aysola and Burris are investigating whether the pandemic has had a significant impact on preterm birth rates.
Burris told WHYY that the birth disparities between Black and white newborns is an issue particularly close to her heart, because she developed a unique perspective on race as a white person growing up in a small, predominantly Black community.
“Within my small micro-community, I was a minority and was able to see the world in more of a racialized lens," Burris told WHYY. "And so when I came into medicine [and] I would see the sort of over-representation of Black infants in the neonatal intensive care unit, I started asking questions why.”
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