Infant mortality and morbidity are widely recognized as significant problems in the US. This paper will examine the effects of smoking behavior on pregnancy outcomes among US teenage mothers. We concentrate on teenage mothers because of their high risk of negative birth outcomes and because these are the ages when smoking is typically initiated. The rates of tobacco use among pregnant teenagers continued to increase about two percent for the last four years. We used the 1990 and 1991 Birth Cohort Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Sets, and the 1995 Perinatal Mortality Data Files. The study employed three dependent variables: gestational age, birth-weight and infant death. Smoking and adequacy of prenatal care acted as intermediate determinants of pregnancy outcomes. Mother's age, race, education, parity, and marital status controlled the analysis. Our previous study found that teenage mothers who smoked during pregnancy were more likely to obtain inadequate prenatal care, to deliver low birth-weight babies, and to have infants with high mortality rates, controlled by other variables (p<.001). We also found that non-Hispanic white and older teenage mothers were more likely to smoke but obtained adequate prenatal care. We plan to focus our paper on the connections between smoking during pregnancy and adequacy of prenatal care among various race and age groups and how these diverse groups affect pregnancy outcomes.
Learning Objectives: Recognize the importance of educating teenagers about the effects of smoking
Keywords: Adolescents, Tobacco
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: It was my 1999 small grants to do a reasearch assistantship with a faculty member
in Sociology Department, Brown University.