Collaborative ECHO research led by Sheena Martenies, PhD, MPH of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign investigates the combined effects of environmental hazards and social stressors on pregnancy and infant health. This research included information on more than 13,000 infants born between 2010 and 2019 from 41 ECHO cohorts located throughout the United States. In this study, researchers found that pregnant people living in neighborhoods with higher combined exposures had shorter pregnancies and smaller babies. This research, titled “Associations between combined exposure to environmental hazards and social stressors at the neighborhood level and individual perinatal outcomes in the ECHO-wide cohort,” is published in Health & Place.
Previous studies have found that neighborhood conditions can influence pregnancy and infant health, but few have examined the effects of exposure to a combination of environmental and social conditions. It is important to look at multiple exposures simultaneously because this more closely mirrors real-world experiences. There are existing tools for looking at combined exposures to environmental hazards and social stressors in neighborhoods, but they either do not have national coverage or they do not cover the time frames needed.
ECHO researchers developed an exposure index which combined data on multiple environmental hazards and social circumstances—including air pollutants, vehicle traffic, poverty, and crowded housing—into a single measure of neighborhood conditions. Pregnant people were assigned an index score based on where they lived during their pregnancy. Then, the researchers looked at how this index score was associated with birthweight, length of pregnancy, and other pregnancy outcomes.
The researchers found that pregnant people living in neighborhoods with higher combined exposures had shorter pregnancies and smaller babies. For Black pregnant people, there was a higher risk of preterm birth associated with increased combined exposures during pregnancy compared to White pregnant people. The researchers also found that pregnant people living in rural areas had shorter pregnancies and smaller babies compared to pregnant people living in urban areas who had similar index scores.
More research is needed to determine which factors included in the exposure index are most important in pregnancy and child health outcomes. Some members of the research team are currently studying data from two ECHO cohorts (Healthy Start and MADRES) to explore how neighborhood-level exposures might interact to influence obesity later in life.