Pregnancy Outcomes Among Immigrant Women from Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States

No previous study has examined pregnancy outcomes among immigrant women from the post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), many of whom are economic or conflict refugees. Research on Hispanic and African immigrants has found that they are at decreased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes relative to their US-born counterparts, whereas this has not been found consistently among Asian groups. Using birth data from New York City during 1995-2003 we examined the risk of delivering preterm (PTD) (<37 weeks) or an infant small-for-gestational-age (SGA) among immigrants from 13 countries or regions of Eastern Europe and the CIS relative to non-Hispanic (NH) US-born whites. Most Eastern European and CIS groups had significantly later entry into prenatal care, were more likely to be Medicaid recipients, and had lower educational attainment than NH-US-born whites. In logistic regression analyses adjusting for age, education, Medicaid, trimester of prenatal care, parity, and pre-pregnancy weight, women from Czech Republic/Slovakia (aOR=0.4, 95%CI=0.2, 0.8), former Yugoslavia (aOR=0.8, 95%CI=0.7, 0.9), Russia (aOR=0.8, 95%CI=0.7, 0.9), and Central Asian CIS (aOR=0.8, 95%CI=0.6, 1.0) had lower risk of PTD than did NH-US-born white women. Lower SGA risk was found among women from Poland (aOR=0.6, 95%CI=0.6, 0.7) former Yugoslavia (aOR=0.7, 95%CI=0.6, 0.8), Albania (aOR=0.6, 95%CI=0.5, 0.7), and the Baltics (aOR=0.7, 95%CI=0.5, 1.1). Women from the remaining regions had similar PTD or SGA risks as NH-US-born whites. Immigrant women from Eastern Europe and the CIS are at similar or lower risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes than NH-US-born white women.