Risk of Stillbirth Among Foreign-Born Mothers in the United States

The objective of this study is to assess the impact of maternal nativity on stillbirth in the US. We utilized the US Birth Data and Fetal Death Data for the years 2014-2017. Our analysis was restricted to live and stillbirths (N= of 14,867,880) that occurred within the gestational age of 20-42 weeks. The fetuses-at risk approach was used to generate stillbirth trends by gestational age. Adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression model was utilized to estimate the association between maternal nativity and stillbirth. Overall, the gestational week-specific prospective risk of stillbirth was consistently higher for native-born than their foreign-born mothers. Foreign-born mothers were 20% less likely to experience stillbirth than their native-born counterparts (AHR = 0.80; 95% CI = 0.78-0.81). Delineating the factors influencing the observed effect of maternal nativity on birth outcomes should be a research priority to inform strategies to address adverse birth outcomes in the US.