African-American babies suffer the highest rate of preterm births

BY JAN WEST
Special to Rice News

Premature births are on the rise, and blacks have the highest rate of preterm births compared with whites and Hispanics, who have similar socio-economic issues, said Charleta Guillory, a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital.

	CHARLETA GUILLORY

Guillory spoke on ”Disparity in the Neonate: It’s Not Just Black and
White” at the inaugural luncheon for the Rice Connection Speakers Series
hosted by Rice University’s Multicultural Community Relations in the
Office of Public Affairs.

“In Texas, babies born to African-American mothers die at two to three times the rate of babies born to white mothers,” she said. ”Just being black increases the risk of a mother having a preterm baby.”

This new series invites community leaders to present a lecture to Rice faculty, staff and students about a pressing social issue. The format is designed to engage participants in an intimate and informal discussion.

Guillory is associate director of Level II Nurseries at Texas Children’s and director of the hospital’s Neonatal-Perinatal Public Health Program. She is also an associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. She is the first black woman to attend and graduate from Louisiana State University”s School of Medicine.

”Health disparities are differences that should not be,” she said. Guillory became aware of this problem early in her career when she walked through a neonatal intensive care unit and noticed that the presence of black babies was much higher than that of other babies. ”African-Americans are only 12 percent to 13 percent of the Houston population, but they are disproportionately affected,” she said.

Guillory is a fierce advocate for solutions to preterm births — births that occur before 37 completed weeks of gestation. Preterm births account for 12.8 percent of all births but result in one-third of all infant deaths and 50 percent of all neurological disabilities. Preterm births cause medical, emotional and economic trauma.

”The Institute of Medicine reported that in 2005 the annual societal economic cost — medical, educational and lost productivity — associated with preterm birth in the United States was at least $26.2 billion,” Guillory said.

”Babies who are less than 32 weeks are mostly responsible for the morbidity and mortality rates, and it is in that group that the highest incidence of African-Americans babies are being born.”

The first course of action to reducing high preterm births for black babies is to get the word out in the African-American community, she said.

”If you want to really make an indentation on this number, then you have to work in that community where the highest incidence of premature births are located,” she said.

Another solution she champions is the March of Dimes’ Honey Child Prenatal Education Program, which is a faith-based prenatal health-education program. The program addresses unique needs of African-American women and combines culturally relevant education with hands-on activities designed to support positive health behaviors that result in improved birth outcomes. The program includes group prenatal education sessions and mentoring.

”If you can change or affect one life in preventing prematurity and all of its complications,” Guillory said, ”you have made a big difference in the world.”

— Jan West is assistant director of Multicultural Community Relations.