June 23, 2006
Hispanic Mothers Have Healthier Babies
South Florida researchers have published a study that argues some health disparity exists within minority groups.
Although having similar socioeconomic disadvantages Hispanic women have healthier babies.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports:
An 11-year study by Dr. Victor Hugo Gonzalez-Quintero and colleagues at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine reviewed more than 80,000 deliveries at Jackson Memorial Hospital, and found Hispanic mothers had the lowest rate of low-birth-weight infants, 9 percent, compared with 18 percent for non-Hispanic black mothers and 11 percent for non-Hispanic white mothers.
The findings, published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine, echo previous studies in border states such as Texas and California, where 70 percent of the Hispanic new moms in the studies were of Mexican heritage, Gonzalez-Quintero said.