The Self Reported Health of US Women in the First Postpartum Year: NHANES 2007-2018

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorShenassa, Edmonden_US
dc.contributor.authorFahey, Jenifer Osornoen_US
dc.contributor.departmentPublic and Community Healthen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2021-07-13T05:37:51Z
dc.date.available2021-07-13T05:37:51Z
dc.date.issued2021en_US
dc.description.abstractBackground: Most existing information about the health of US postpartum mothers comes from studies of morbidity and mortality. As a result, relatively little is known about the general well-being of postpartum mothers. Self-rated health (SRH), a single-item, 5-level ordinal measure has been widely used as an indicator of general health status in epidemiologic and population health research. There are no US population studies of maternal SRH in the postpartum period. Methods: An analytic sample of 6,266 women ages 20-44 was created from the 2007-2018 waves of the National Health and Nutrition Surveys. The 5-level SRH measure was dichotomized into “good” and “poor” levels and multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to characterize the relationship between postpartum status and SRH and to test whether parity, cigarette smoking, pregnancy, depression, sleep duration, tiredness/fatigue, obesity, history of c-section and breastfeeding status independently predict poor SRH in the sub-population of postpartum women (n=508). Results: There is a significant relationship between postpartum status and SRH that is moderated by pregnancy status. For women who are not pregnant, postpartum status is associated with lower odds of poor SRH (OR 0.52, 95% CI, 0.34-0.79) while for women who are pregnant, postpartum status is associated with increased odds of poor SRH (OR 2.34, 95% CI 0.81-6.78), an association that did not reach statistical significance at a p=0.05 level. Having a high school education (OR 0.35, 95% CI, 0.13-0.95) breastfeeding (OR 0.22, 95% CI 0.10-0.52) were associated with lower odds of poor SRH, while being Hispanic (OR 3.51, 95% CI 1.20-10.27), tired (OR 2.40, 95% CI 1.08-5.57) or obese (OR 2.72, 95% CI, 1.35-5.56) were associated with higher odds of maternal report of poor health. Discussion: Postpartum status is associated with better SRH. This is not the case; however, for women who are pregnant again in the first postpartum year suggesting that a short interpregnancy interval (IPI) is a threat to postpartum maternal well-being. Breastfeeding, on the other hand, is associated with a strong protective effect on maternal postpartum SRH. These results suggest a need for postpartum contraceptive and breastfeeding promotion efforts that focus on immediate impacts on maternal health. Maternal postpartum obesity and maternal tiredness also emerge as priority areas for maternal postpartum health promotion initiatives. Additional research on the postpartum experience of Hispanic mothers is warranted.  en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/e0wm-jbca
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/27391
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPublic healthen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledEpidemiologyen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledObstetricsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledbreastfeedingen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledinter-pregnancy intervalen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledmaternal healthen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpostpartumen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpregnancyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledself-reported healthen_US
dc.titleThe Self Reported Health of US Women in the First Postpartum Year: NHANES 2007-2018en_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Fahey_umd_0117E_21527.pdf
Size:
1.79 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

UMD Theses and Dissertations
Behavioral & Community Health Theses and Dissertations