Jahn Jaquelyn L, Krieger Nancy, Agénor Madina, Leung Michael, Davis Brigette A, Weisskopf Marc G, Chen Jarvis T
Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, City University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY, USA.
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA, USA.
EClinicalMedicine. 2021 May 24;36:100901. doi: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.100901. eCollection 2021 Jun.
Fatal police violence in the United States disproportionately affects Black, Native American, and Hispanic people, and for these groups it is a racially oppressive population-level stressor that we hypothesize increases the risk of pregnancy loss. Focusing on core based statical areas (CBSAs) surrounding small and large urban centers, we accordingly tested whether gestational exposure to fatal police violence decreased the number of live births, which is reflective of a rise in lost pregnancies.
Our observational study linked microdata for all births ( = 7,709,300) in 520 CBSAs with at least one incident of fatal police violence in 2013-2015 to Fatal Encounters, a database that prospectively identified 2594 police-related fatalities using online media reports and public records. We estimated the association between month-to-month fatal police violence and conceptions resulting in live births using distributed lag quasi-Poisson models with CBSA-level fixed effects, adjusted for seasonality and stratified by maternal race/ethnicity.
For each additional police-related fatality that occurred in the first through sixth months of gestation, we observed a 0.14% decrease (95% confidence interval: 0.05%, 0.23%) in the total number of live births within CBSAs, and a 0.29% decrease in births to Black women (95% CI: 0.11%, 0.48%). The association was null for births to White women.
Our findings suggest fatal police violence may have population-level consequences for pregnancy loss and adds to the evidence regarding the importance of preventing these fatalities.
美国致命的警察暴力对黑人、美洲原住民和西班牙裔的影响尤为严重，对这些群体而言，这是一种种族压迫性的群体层面压力源，我们推测这会增加流产风险。围绕大小城市中心的基于核心的统计区域（CBSA），我们据此测试妊娠期暴露于致命警察暴力是否会减少活产数量，这反映了流产数量的增加。
我们的观察性研究将2013 - 2015年至少发生一起致命警察暴力事件的520个CBSA中所有出生（n = 7,709,300）的微观数据与“致命遭遇”数据库相链接，该数据库利用在线媒体报道和公共记录前瞻性地识别了2594起与警察相关的死亡事件。我们使用具有CBSA层面固定效应的分布滞后准泊松模型估计逐月致命警察暴力与导致活产的受孕之间的关联，并对季节性进行了调整，并按产妇种族/族裔进行分层。
在妊娠的第一至第六个月，每多发生一起与警察相关的死亡事件，我们观察到CBSA内活产总数减少0.14%（95%置信区间：0.05%，0.23%），黑人女性的出生数减少0.29%（95%CI：0.11%，0.48%）。白人女性的出生数之间的关联不显著。
我们的研究结果表明，致命警察暴力可能对流产产生群体层面的影响，并补充了有关预防这些死亡事件重要性的证据。
