Prenatal Health Care Counseling and Partner Abuse among Asian and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander Mothers

Background. Prenatal health care (PNC) counseling is associated with positive health outcomes for the mothers and infants. There is a literature gap however regarding Asian and Pacific Islander mothers' PNC counseling in physical abuse (PA). Objectives. 1) To determine the proportion of mothers who received PNC counseling in PA; and, 2) to examine ethnic differences in the receipt of PNC counseling in PA. Methods. We analyzed data from the 2004-08 Hawai‘i's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (n=8,472). Ethnicities included: 20.21% White, 27.78% Native Hawaiian (NH), 18.56% Filipino, 12.28% Japanese, 6.90% Other Asian, 7.94% Other Pacific Islander and 6.34% All Others. Mothers were asked if a doctor, nurse, or other health care worker talked with them about PA by their husbands/partners during any of their PNC visits. Descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted. Results. Overall, 47.70% of mothers were counseled in PA and 6.47% reported experience with PA. Adjusted analyses reveal that compared to White mothers, NH [OR=0.81 (95% CI: 0.69, 0.94)], Japanese [OR=0.42 (95% CI: 0.34, 0.51)], and Other Asian [OR=0.61 (95% CI: 0.51, 0.74)] mothers were significantly less likely to report receipt of PNC in PA; there were no differences for the other ethnicities. Compared to White mothers, the rates of PA was 3.32 times more for NH, 0.67 times less for Japanese and 0.27 less for Other Asian mothers. Conclusions. The disparity in PA counseling among NH mothers needs to be addressed so the health and safety of the mother and infant can be assured.