Implications of Social Determinants of Health Characteristics on Fetal Growth Restriction Among Various Racial/Ethnic Groups.

Objectives: Current knowledge regarding the relationship between social determinants of health (SDOH) characteristics of hospitalized American pregnant women and fetal growth restriction (FGR) reveals a dearth in the literature. Therefore, we examined the impact of SDOH on FGR among hospitalized American women in this study.

Methods: Using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) dataset for the years 2016-2018, we conducted this cross-sectional study. We conducted survey logistic regression to examine the association between SDOH factors and FGR, after adjusting for various hospitalization characteristics.

Results: Non-Hispanic (NH)-Black people had the highest prevalence of SDOH issues (0.7%), followed by Hispanics who had a prevalence of 0.4%. We observed that pregnant women with SDOH issues were 1.16 times as likely to experience FGR as those without SDOH (95% CI 1.0-1.34). When compared to their respective racial counterparts without SDOH, Hispanics with SDOH had increased odds, NH-White and NH-others with SDOH had the same likelihood, and NH-Black women with SDOH had lower odds of FGR.

Conclusions For Practice: Overall, our study illustrated an association between maternal SDOH issues and FGR, and the impact of SDOH issues on the outcome of FGR across various racial/ethnic groups. While our study provides useful insight into the topic, further research is needed to explain the observed varied influence of SDOH on FGR across racial/ethnic groups.