Journal 2

What is your topic? Or what are your key words thus far?


My topic is: race and birth outcomes.


Key words:

• African American woman
• disparities
• stress
• racism
• pregnancy

What is your research question? Have you decided to change it at all? And, if you have, how do I know that the way in which this question is formulated is appropriate to conduct a literature review with a systematic approach?


My research question is: "Does race effect birth outcomes?" No I have not decided to change my question.


And what are the definitions on which it depends?

• African American woman : This is the control group
• Disparities: Difference between each race
• Stress: A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances. This would be regarding the pregnancy and racism
• Racism: Prejudice or discrimination. This would be regarding "just being black" and is a direct correlation with "stress"
• Pregnancy: Being pregnant.

What is your hierarchy of evidence? And how do I know you going about finding the most appropriate evidence/method for your research question?


My hierarchy of evidence would be the woman that have actually given birth and have had a pregnancy that resulted in a preterm or underweight baby. I will know the most appropriate evidence/method is right for my research question, is if the study has an appropriate amount of random AA woman they watched in comparison to another race.


How do I know that the remit of the method itself is selecting the research, rather than just you on a whim? + 1 thing you found interesting + how you imagine using the source.

    1. Dominguez, T. P. (2010;2011;). Adverse birth outcomes in african american women: The social context of persistent reproductive disadvantage. Social Work in Public Health, 26(1), 3-16. doi:10.1080/10911350902986880

This article states how African American Woman have the highest possibility of having a pre term birth or low birth weight baby, that would eventually end up in the death of the baby. The article goes on to say that these outcomes are not related to health behaviors but more social factors like race and socio economic status. They used data from the National Center for Health Statistics to compare AA woman to other races.  This would be considered using grounded theory for this study.

    2. Lind, C. E., Godfrey, E. M., Rankin, K. M., & Handler, A. S. (2014). Likelihood    of emergency contraception use among african-american women at risk of adverse  birth outcomes. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 18(5), 1190-1195. doi:10.1007/s10995-013-1349-z

 
This article is interesting because they are trying to see the likelihood of birth control to be used on AA woman that have had birth outcomes that are not desirable. They used high risk AA woman from low-income neighborhoods. This would be a case control study. I am not sure I would use this article towards my research. This was interesting because instead of figuring out ways to reduce the likelihood of these woman having adverse birth outcomes they are trying to just prevent the pregnancy.


   3. Giurgescu, C., McFarlin, B., Lomax, J., Craddock, C., & Albrecht, A. (2011). Racial discrimination and the black-white gap in adverse birth outcomes: A review. Journal of Midwifery & Womens Health, 56(4), 362-370. doi:10.1111/j.1542-2011.2011.00034.x


This article states that AA woman have a higher risk for infant mortality and preterm birth because of higher lifetime exposure to chronic stress. Racial discrimination would be a psychological stressor. This study could be an example of phermemology because discrimination would be an experience that the AA woman had in result to have the adverse birth outcomes.
 

  4. Nuru-Jeter, A., Dominguez, T., Hammond, W., Leu, J., Skaff, M., Egerter, S., . . . Braveman, P. (2009). "it's the skin you're in": African-american women talk about their experiences of racism. an exploratory study to develop measures of racism for birth outcome studies. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 13(1), 29-39. doi:10.1007/s10995-008-0357-x

This study was approved by UCSF and used 40 AA woman from around California and compared the racism they endured throughout their life.  This cohort study can be used for my research because it showed that these AA woman developed lifelong effects from the racism. This would be in direct correlation to chronic stress and adverse birth outcomes.

5. Bryant, A. (2010). Racial/ethnic disparities in obstetric outcomes and care: Prevalence and determinants. Am J Obstet Gynecol, 202(4), 335-343. doi:10.1016/j.ajog.2009.10.864