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. 2024 Jun 17;12(12):1211.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare12121211.

Perinatal Outcomes of Immigrant Mothers and Their Infants Born Very Preterm across Germany

Britta M Hüning  1   2 , Julia Jaekel  1   3   4   5   6 , Nils Jaekel  3   5   7 , Wolfgang Göpel  8 , Egbert Herting  8 , Ursula Felderhoff-Müser  1   2 , Juliane Spiegler  4   9 , Christoph Härtel  9
Affiliations

Perinatal Outcomes of Immigrant Mothers and Their Infants Born Very Preterm across Germany

Britta M Hüning et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

Background: In Germany, more than 40% of infants are born to immigrant parents. Increased survival rates of very preterm (below 32 weeks gestation at birth; VP) infants have not resulted in equally improved life chances and quality of life. More information on perinatal variations in outcomes according to social inequalities, migration background, and language barriers is needed. We tested whether mothers' immigrant status and language barriers are associated with perinatal health and short-term neonatal outcomes.

Methods: The data are from the national multi-centre German Neonatal Network (GNN) cohort, including VP births from 2009 onwards. In total, 3606 (n = 1738 female) children were assessed, and 919 (n = 449 female) of these children had immigrant backgrounds. Immigrant status was operationalised as a binary variable based on the children's mothers' countries of birth (born in Germany vs. foreign-born). Self-reported home language (L1) was used to calculate the average linguistic distance to German as one continuous variable.

Results: Mixed-effects models showed that two out of fourteen effects of interest survived the adjustment for known confounders and accounting for the nestedness of data within birth hospitals. Linguistic distance from mothers' L1s to German was independently associated with diagnoses of preeclampsia (OR = 1.01, 95% CI = [1.00, 1.01]). Infants of foreign-born mothers had higher odds for amniotic infection syndrome (AIS; OR = 1.45 [1.13, 1.86]) than infants of German mothers.

Conclusions: Our findings from this large multi-centre longitudinal cohort of VP-born children indicate that maternal immigrant status and language barriers have limited impact on perinatal health and severe neonatal outcomes. This suggests that, regardless of background or language skills, there may be few inequalities in the perinatal health of pregnant women and their newborn preterm infants.

Keywords: immigrants; inequalities; language barriers; perinatal and neonatal health; very preterm birth.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The funders had no role in the design of this study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of this manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Linguistic distance variable scores among German and five selected immigrant languages.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Study design flow chart of the GNN sample assessed to 5–6 years.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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