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Prenatal healthcare after sentencing reform: heterogeneous effects for prenatal healthcare access and equity
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Prenatal healthcare after sentencing reform: heterogeneous effects for prenatal healthcare access and equity

Jaquelyn L Jahn and Jessica T Simes
BMC public health, v 22(1), pp 954-954
12 May 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13359-7
PMID: 35549928
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13359-7View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Criminal justice reform Health equity Incarceration Prenatal care
High rates of imprisonment in the U.S. have significant health, social, and economic consequences, particularly for marginalized communities. This study examines imprisonment as a contextual driver of receiving prenatal care by evaluating whether early and adequate prenatal care improved after Pennsylvania's criminal sentencing reform reduced prison admissions. We linked individual-level birth certificate microdata on births (n = 999,503) in Pennsylvania (2009-2015), to monthly county-level rates of prison admissions. We apply an interrupted time series approach that contrasts post-policy changes in early and adequate prenatal care across counties where prison admissions were effectively reduced or continued to rise. We then tested whether prenatal care improvements were stronger among Black birthing people and those with lower levels of educational attainment. In counties where prison admissions declined the most after the policy, early prenatal care increased from 69.0% to 73.2%, and inadequate prenatal care decreased from 18.1% to 15.9%. By comparison, improvements in early prenatal care were smaller in counties where prison admissions increased the most post-policy (73.5 to 76.4%) and there was no change to prenatal care inadequacy (14.4% pre and post). We find this pattern of improvements to be particularly strong among Black birthing people and those with lower levels of educational attainment. Pennsylvania's sentencing reforms were associated with small advancements in racial and socioeconomic equity in prenatal care.

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7 Record Views
6 citations in Web of Science
4 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
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