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States with more killings of unarmed Black people have larger Black–White preterm birth disparities

Journal of Perinatology volume 41, pages 358–359 (2021)Cite this article

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The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and more, have refocused national attention on police brutality against Black people. In the US, Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than White people and 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed [1]. Disproportionate police killing of Black Americans reflects structural racism that may vary by state. Structural racism has been implicated in one of the largest racial disparities in human health, preterm birth (PTB) [2]. We sought to determine if states with more police killings of unarmed Black Americans had greater Black–White PTB disparities.

We identified police killings of unarmed Black people from the Mapping Police Violence database [1] from 2013 to 2018. We categorized states into quantiles of police killings. The lowest quantile (Q0) included states with no killings; remaining states were divided into quartiles (Q1–Q4). We extracted data for singleton births of non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black people in 2018 from CDC Wonder [3]. We excluded states with fewer than ten PTBs for either race. We calculated PTB disparities by dividing Black PTB rate by White PTB rate to generate relative risks (RRs). The Black–White PTB disparities for states in Q0–1 and Q2–4 were compared using a test for the ratio of RR [4]. We re-ran the analysis using quantiles of police killing rates of unarmed Black people (scaling by Black population from US Census).

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Fig. 1: Police killings of unarmed black Americans and racial disparities in preterm birth in each state.

References

  1. Sinyangwe S, Mckesson D, Packnett B. Mapping police violence. 2020. https://mappingpoliceviolence.org.

  2. Chambers BD, Baer RJ, Mclemore MR, Jelliffe-Pawlowski LL. Using index of concentration at the extremes as indicators of structural racism to evaluate the association with preterm birth and infant mortality—California, 2011–2012. J Urban Health. 2018;96:159–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-018-0272-4.

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Funding

The Department of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia provided support for this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Nancy Yang

  2. Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    James W. Collins Jr

  3. Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Heather H. Burris

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  1. Nancy Yang
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  2. James W. Collins Jr
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Correspondence to Heather H. Burris.

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Yang, N., Collins, J.W. & Burris, H.H. States with more killings of unarmed Black people have larger Black–White preterm birth disparities. J Perinatol 41, 358–359 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41372-020-00914-6

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