Grantee Research Project Results
2011 Progress Report: Research Project A: Mapping Disparities in Birth Outcomes
EPA Grant Number: R833293C001Subproject: this is subproject number 001 , established and managed by the Center Director under grant R833293
(EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
Center: The Center for Study of Neurodevelopment and Improving Children's Health
Center Director: Murphy, Susan K.
Title: Research Project A: Mapping Disparities in Birth Outcomes
Investigators: Miranda , Marie Lynn , Gelfand, Alan , Myers, Evan , Maxson, Pamela
Current Investigators: Miranda , Marie Lynn , Gelfand, Alan , James, Sherman , Swamy, Geeta , Maxson, Pamela
Institution: Duke University
EPA Project Officer: Callan, Richard
Project Period: May 1, 2007 through April 30, 2012 (Extended to April 30, 2014)
Project Period Covered by this Report: May 1, 2011 through April 30,2012
RFA: Centers for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research (2005) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Human Health , Children's Health
Objective:
The central objective of Project A (C001) is to determine whether and to what extent joint exposures to socioeconomic and environmental stressors contribute to racial and ethnic health disparities in fetal growth restriction. Using a geographically-based nested study design moving from analysis of births for the entire State of North Carolina to six demographically and geographically distinct counties to a single health center and state-of-the-art Geographic Information Systems applications with Bayesian spatial hierarchical modeling and other advanced spatial statistical approaches, the specific aims are to:
- Spatially link detailed birth record, fetal death certificates, socioeconomic, environmental, tax assessor, community-based, and clinical obstetric data at highly resolved scales for the State of North Carolina from 1990-2003;
- Refine the concept of fetal growth restriction by a) developing a joint distribution for birthweight and gestation using bivariate modeling for live births and fetal deaths both separately and jointly, and b) defining it in terms of fetal and infant mortality, rather than percentile cut points; and
- Determine whether and to what extent differential exposures to both environmental and social stressors help explain health disparities in fetal growth restriction among a) African-American women compared to Non-Hispanic white and Hispanic women, b) Older African-American women compared to younger African-American women, c) Hispanic women compared to Non-Hispanic white and African-American women, and d) Foreign born Hispanic women compared to US born Hispanic women.
Progress Summary:
A continuing goal is the linking of the detailed birth record data to USEPA PM10, PM2.5, and ozone monitoring data in order to study the impact of maternal exposure to air pollution on birth weight. We are especially focused on refining exposure metrics to most effectively characterize meaningful exposures, as well as to capture any windows of vulnerability. Significant progress has been made on the relationship between birth outcomes and exposure to particulate matter and ozone separately, and the current focus is determining how to characterize joint exposure to both particulate matter and ozone.
Ongoing work has been devoted to a novel project concerned with connecting the built environment to adverse pregnancy outcomes. Built environment data has been collected under the Community Assessment Project and, after preliminary analysis has focused on spatial layers capturing four primary attributes of the built environment: housing damage, property disorder, tenure, and vacancy. Connection has been made to preterm birth and low birth weight.
Our work on racial residential segregation can be connected to measures of social and economic disadvantage at these scales to gain insight into how racial residential segregation has manifested itself across urban landscapes. In turn, this promises to reveal key insights into how to think about the spatial aspects of the social factors influencing health disparities. We are working to determine which facets of segregation best characterize the way community-level racial residential segregation acts to promote health disparities in birth outcomes, as well as how those facets correlate with environmental exposures and disamenities.
We continue to work on developing methods to look at environmental exposures and pregnancy outcomes. We are building spatial downscalers, which enable the fusion of monitoring station data with computer model output to better assess environmental exposure at point level spatial resolution. We are also looking at joint models for birthweight and gestational age using bivariate normal mixtures. Such joint modeling adjusts for maternal risk factors and provides mixture analysis of the residuals to help illuminate further subpopulations with differential risk for adverse joint birth outcomes. In addition, we have examined quantile regression methodology in explaining the effect of exposure on pregnancy outcomes. Rather than explaining mean birthweight as in customary regression models, we are interested in explaining quantiles for birthweight. Our analysis indicates that risk factors and environmental exposures affect different quantiles differently. We have also completed considerable methodological work on expected performance accruing to synthesizing categorical datasets with the objective of enhancing inference. We are particularly interested in how to deal with a collection of datasets of varying sizes that are all relevant to a particular scientific question, but which include different subsets of the relevant variables, with some overlap.
Future Activities:
We plan to continue working on each of the areas described in the progress report/summary of accomplishments section. Achieving a better understanding of exposure to air toxicants, particularly particulate matter and ozone, is a central focus of our future efforts. We continue the process of linking participants in Project B with their associated birth certificate record. This linkage allows us to explore issues of data accuracy in the detailed birth record, as well as to begin implementing the methods of synthesizing categorical data.
Journal Articles on this Report : 18 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
| Other subproject views: | All 66 publications | 37 publications in selected types | All 36 journal articles |
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| Other center views: | All 163 publications | 77 publications in selected types | All 76 journal articles |
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Anthopolos R, James SA, Gelfand AE, Miranda ML. A spatial measure of neighborhood level racial isolation applied to low birthweight, preterm birth, and birthweight in North Carolina. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology 2011;2(4):235-246. |
R833293 (2009) R833293 (2010) R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2010) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Berrocal VJ, Gelfand AE, Holland DM, Burke J, Miranda ML. On the use of a PM2.5 exposure simulator to explain birthweight. Environmetrics 2011;22(4):553-571. |
R833293 (2009) R833293 (2010) R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2010) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Berrocal VJ, Gelfand AE, Holland DM. Space-time data fusion under error in computer model output: an application to modeling air quality. Biometrics 2012;68(3):837-848. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (2012) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Chang HH, Reich BJ, Miranda ML. Time-to-event analysis of fine particle air pollution and preterm birth: results from North Carolina, 2001-2005. American Journal of Epidemiology 2012;175(2):91-98. |
R833293 (2010) R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2010) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) R833293C002 (2011) R833293C002 (Final) R833863 (2011) |
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Chang HH, Reich BJ, Miranda ML. A spatial time-to-event approach for estimating associations between air pollution and preterm birth. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society--Series C (Applied Statistics) 2013;62(2):167-179. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (2012) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) R833293C002 (2011) R833293C002 (Final) R834799 (2014) R834799 (2016) R834799 (Final) R834799C002 (2014) R834799C003 (2013) R834799C003 (2014) |
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Gray SC, Gelfand AE, Miranda ML. Hierarchical spatial modeling of uncertainty in air pollution and birth weight study. Statistics in Medicine 2011;30(17):2187-2198. |
R833293 (2010) R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2010) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Lum K, Gelfand AE. Spatial quantile multiple regression using the asymmetric Laplace process. Bayesian Analysis 2012;7(2):235-258. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Miranda ML, Edwards SE, Keating MH, Paul CJ. Making the environmental justice grade: the relative burden of air pollution exposure in the United States. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2011;8(6):1755-1771. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Miranda ML, Edwards SE. Use of spatial analysis to support environmental health research and practice. North Carolina Medical Journal 2011;72(2):132-135. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Miranda ML, Edwards SE, Myers ER. Adverse birth outcomes among nulliparous vs. multiparous women. Public Health Reports 2011;126(6):797-805. |
R833293 (2010) R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2010) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Miranda ML, Anthopolos R, Edwards SE. Seasonality of poor pregnancy outcomes in North Carolina. North Carolina Medical Journal 2011;72(6):447-453. |
R833293 (2010) R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2010) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Miranda ML, Anthopolos R, Hastings D. A geospatial analysis of the effects of aviation gasoline on childhood blood lead levels. Environmental Health Perspectives 2011;119(10):1513-1516. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Miranda ML, Edwards SE, Anthopolos R, Dolinsky DH, Kemper AR. The built environment and childhood obesity in Durham, North Carolina. Clinical Pediatrics 2012;51(8):750-758. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Miranda ML, Messer LC, Kroeger GL. Associations between the quality of the residential built environment and pregnancy outcomes among women in North Carolina. Environmental Health Perspectives 2012;120(3):471-477. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Miranda ML, Edwards SE, Chang HH, Auten RL. Proximity to roadways and pregnancy outcomes. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology 2013;23(1):32-38. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (2012) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) R833293C002 (2011) R833293C002 (Final) R833293C003 (2011) R833293C003 (Final) |
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Montagna S, Tokdar ST, Neelon B, Dunson DB. Bayesian latent factor regression for functional and longitudinal data. Biometrics 2012;68(4):1064-1073. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (2012) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Neelon B, Swamy GK, Burgette LF, Miranda ML. A Bayesian growth mixture model to examine maternal hypertension and birth outcomes. Statistics in Medicine 2011;30(22):2721-2735. |
R833293 (2010) R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) R833293C002 (2010) R833293C002 (2011) R833293C002 (Final) |
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Vinikoor-Imler LC, Gray SC, Edwards SE, Miranda ML. The effects of exposure to particulate matter and neighbourhood deprivation on gestational hypertension. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 2012;26(2):91-100. |
R833293 (2011) R833293 (Final) R833293C001 (2011) R833293C001 (Final) |
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Supplemental Keywords:
Data fusion, meta analysis, disparities, spatial disaggregation, spatial interpolation, spatial modeling, racial residential segregationProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractMain Center Abstract and Reports:
R833293 The Center for Study of Neurodevelopment and Improving Children's Health Subprojects under this Center: (EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
R833293C001 Research Project A: Mapping Disparities in Birth Outcomes
R833293C002 Research Project B: Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby: Studying Racial Disparities in Birth Outcomes
R833293C003 Research Project C: Perinatal Environmental Exposure Disparity and Neonatal Respiratory Health
R833293C004 Community Outreach and Translation Core
R833293C005 Geographic Information System and Statistical Analysis Core
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.
Project Research Results
36 journal articles for this subproject
Main Center: R833293
163 publications for this center
76 journal articles for this center