Birthweight, Prenatal Care, and Tobacco Use Outcomes of Pregnancies among Asian American Subgroups

Background: Despite the extensive heterogeneity of Asian Americans, they are often aggregated when compared with other racial groups on maternal and child health issues. This study aims to examine ethnic differentials in several major indicators of maternal and infant health among Asian American Subgroup populations.

Methods: Data from Birth Certificates of persons of Asian descent in Georgia aggregated from 1997 through 2006 were analyzed. Data are presented for seven Asian origin subgroups—Asian Indians, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, and “Other Asian” Americans. These groups are compared with respect to risk for low birthweight, very low birthweight, inadequate prenatal care, and mother's use of tobacco during pregnancy.

Results: A total of 38774 births were analyzed. Asian Indian mothers and Vietnamese mothers had significantly higher percentages (9.9% and 8.9% respectively) of low birthweight than Chinese mothers (4.4%). A higher percentage of Korean mothers (9.6%) and Filipino mothers (9.0%) had inadequate prenatal care compared to Asian Indian mothers (7.9%), Japanese mothers (6.7%), and “other Asian” mothers (6.6%). A larger proportion of Korean mothers (4.5%), Filipino mothers (2.8%) and Japanese mothers (2.6%) reported use of tobacco during pregnancy compared to mothers from Asian Indian (0.6%), Chinese (0.4%) and Vietnamese (0.6%) subgroups.

Discussion: Maternal and birth characteristics distributions varied by ethnic subgroups. Our findings provide additional evidence of the importance of subgroup analysis when computing data on health outcomes of Asian population.