Variations in Health and Health Behaviors by Nativity Among Pregnant Black Women in Philadelphia

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: We compared health behaviors and health outcomes among US-born, African-born, and Caribbean-born pregnant Black women and examined whether sociodemographic and psychosocial characteristics explained differences among these population subgroups. METHODS: We analyzed data from a prospective cohort study conducted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a series of nested logistic regression models predicting tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use and measures of physical and mental health. RESULTS: Foreign-born Black women were significantly less likely to engage in substance use and had better self-rated physical and mental health than did native-born Black women. These findings were largely unchanged by adjustment for sociodemographic and psychosocial characteristics. The foreign-born advantage varied by place of birth: it was somewhat stronger for African-born women than for Caribbean-born women. CONCLUSIONS: Further studies are needed to gain a better understanding of the role of immigrant selectivity and other characteristics that contribute to more favorable health behaviors and health outcomes among foreign-born Blacks than among native-born Blacks in the United States.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 55 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.