Maternity Care Deserts in Louisiana and Breastfeeding Initiation

Breastfeeding provides physical, psychological, and immunological benefits to both the mother and infant, but breastfeeding rates are suboptimal. The purpose of this study was to examine whether residing in a maternity care desert (a county with no hospital offering obstetric care and no OB/GYN or c...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Women's health issues Vol. 34; no. 3; pp. 276 - 282
Main Authors:	Haley, Chanell O., King, Lily E., Dyer, Lauren, Evans, Melissa G., Theall, Katherine P., Wallace, Maeve
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States Elsevier Inc 01-05-2024
Subjects:	Adult Black or African American - statistics & numerical data Breast Feeding - statistics & numerical data Ethnicity - statistics & numerical data Female Health Services Accessibility - statistics & numerical data Healthcare Disparities Hispanic or Latino - statistics & numerical data Humans Infant, Newborn Louisiana Maternal Health Services - statistics & numerical data Mothers - psychology Mothers - statistics & numerical data Pregnancy Residence Characteristics White People - statistics & numerical data Young Adult Louisiana
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Breastfeeding provides physical, psychological, and immunological benefits to both the mother and infant, but breastfeeding rates are suboptimal. The purpose of this study was to examine whether residing in a maternity care desert (a county with no hospital offering obstetric care and no OB/GYN or certified nurse midwife providers) was associated with lower breastfeeding rates among birthing people in Louisiana from 2019 to 2020. Data provided by the March of Dimes were used to classify Louisiana parishes by level of access to maternity care. Using data on all live births provided by the Louisiana Office of Vital Records (n = 112,151), we fit adjusted modified Poisson regression models with generalized estimating equations and exploratory geospatial analysis to examine the association between place of residence and breastfeeding initiation and racial disparities in initiation. We conducted a secondary within-group analysis by fitting the fully adjusted model stratified by race/ethnicity for non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic Black birthing people. We found that residing in a parish with limited (odds ratio [OR] = 0.87; 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.77, 0.99]) to no access (OR = 0.88; 95% CI [0.80, 0.97]) was significantly associated with lower breastfeeding initiation rates. The within-group analysis determined that both non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic white birthing people residing in a parish with limited or no maternity care access had lower breastfeeding initiation rates. Reducing rural and racial inequities in breastfeeding may require structural changes and investments in infrastructure to deliver pregnancy care.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1049-3867 1878-4321
DOI:	10.1016/j.whi.2023.11.010