¶ … gleaned from the reading pertaining to Maternal Child Health Most health care workers are aware of ethnic and racial disparities in everything from health risks to care delivery and perception of care. The same is true for maternal health care issues. In "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Preterm Birth," Lu & Chen (2004) examine racial and ethnic disparities specifically with regards to stressful life events prior to the delivery of their child.

Types of stressors included financial, relationship, and emotional stressors, as well as actual trauma. Although non-white women did report significantly higher numbers of stressful life events in all categories, the authors also note that stressful life events did not predict preterm birthing.

Thus, it can be gleaned that stressful life events are important to consider from the perspective of social justice and maternal health. Even if the biological health of the child is not directly impacted by the mother's experience of stress, it is certainly likely that the stressful life events will impact parenting attitudes and behaviors after the child is carried to term.

b. Questions that you had concerning the population discussed in the article

The authors used a large sample of 33,542 women across 19 different states....

This wide and diverse sample increased the external validity of the research. The question of why non-white women are reporting more stressful life events prior to giving birth is the most salient one. Because the authors examine not only financial but also relationship and emotional stress, it is important to ask what can be done to ensure the emotional and psychological well-being of women in various communities. Furthermore, it would be important to inquire about the differences between various ethnic or racial communities rather than presuming that the stress factors and the factors that may mitigate stress are the same for different groups.
c. Questions that surfaced for you pertaining to policy or programmatic issues discussed in the article.

The most important questions that surface, related to policy and programming, include how to better prevent stressful life events from occurring in the first place. Is it possible to discover the root causes of stressful life event occurrences among women in non-white communities? Is patriarchal social structure a primary cause of stress and if so, what can be done to minimize patriarchy without significantly dismantling the integrity of social norms and institutions? Empowering women, and ensuring that policies and programs are not ethically relative are…