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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Rahel Mathews, MPH, Jack Leiss, PhD, MPH, and Sara Sousa, MPH. Statistics and Epidemiology, Constella Health Sciences, 2605 Meridian Parkway, Suite 200, Durham, NC 27713, 919 544-8500, rmathews@constellagroup.com

While studies have shown that women who give birth as teenagers are more likely to drop out of school and follow a more difficult social path than women who were not teen mothers, few studies have followed a large cohort of teen mothers through their educational attainment. The Southeast Perinatal Data Project constructed maternally linked data sets from vital birth records for North Carolina, 1988-1997, and Georgia, 1988-2002. Using the maternally linked sets, we captured a cohort of over 60,000 women who were 19 or younger and had not finished high school at the time of the birth. We followed the mother's educational status through the birth records of her subsequent deliveries. We compared age, parity, race (white, black, Native Americans and Asians) and ethnicity (non-Hispanic and Hispanic) among those who finished and did not finish high school. Results showed that, overall, about half of the women completed high school during the follow-up period. Sixty percent of black teenage mothers finished high school compared to 38% for whites. These results were similar for Georgia and North Carolina. Marriage at the time of first delivery was more frequent among whites than among blacks in both states (37% of white and 1.6% of blacks in Georgia; 45% of whites and 2.6% of blacks in North Carolina). The association between marriage and completion of high school is described in more detail. Loss-to-follow up is a major limitation of this study. Strengths and limitations of using maternally linked birth records are discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• To describe demographics of teen mothers, comparing those who finished high school to those who did not.
• To describe the strengths and limitations of following a cohort through a maternally linked file.

Keywords: MCH Epidemiology,

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered