Pregnancy outcomes in relation to country of birth

Project summary

This project is part of a planned research program which aims to investigate different aspects of pregnancy and birth in migrant women and ultimately to design and evaluate interventions that aim to improve migrant women’s perinatal health.

We aim to explore the associations between adverse maternal and infant pregnancy outcomes in relation to country of birth in a Norwegian population of Norwegian-born and migrant primiparous and multiparous women who gave birth between 1990 and 2013. Our hypotheses are that 1) women from low-income countries and refugees are at higher risk of maternal and fetal adverse pregnancy outcome, 2) the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes will vary in relation to time in the receiving country and country of origin and 3) migrant women with foreign-born partners will have worse health outcomes than migrant women with Norwegian-born partners.

Method

The study is a register study using the Norwegian Medical Birth register (MBRN) and from Statistics Norway. Data on all pregnancies during the period of 1990 to 2013 will be analyzed. Data on mother’s country of birth will be retrieved from Statistics Norway. A careful categorization of world regions will also be conducted, using for instance the UN  or the World Bank classifications to enable comparison with previous studies