Identification

Title

Heat waves and early birth: Exploring vulnerability by individual‐ and area‐level factors

Abstract

Extreme heat has been linked to many health outcomes, including preterm and early term birth. We examine associations between acute heat wave exposure and risk of preterm (PTB) (28–36 weeks) or early term (ETB) (37–38 weeks) birth, stratified by individual‐level and area‐level factors. Daily ambient mean temperature was linked to maternal residence in state vital records for preterm and early term births in California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Oregon between 1990 and 2017. Heat waves were identified during the four‐day exposure window preceding birth using the 97.5th percentile mean temperature for zip code tabulation areas (ZCTA). We used a time‐stratified case‐crossover design, restricted to the warm season (May through September) and stratified by maternal age, maternal education, ZCTA‐level impervious land cover or social deprivation index. We pooled estimated odds ratios across states using inverse‐variance weighting. The PTB and ETB analyses included up to 945,836 and 2,966,661 cases, respectively. Heat‐related ETB risk was consistently highest among women <25 years of age, women with ≤high school education, and women living in areas of higher social deprivation and impervious land cover. PTB associations were also elevated in these subgroups, but positive associations were also observed among older, more educated mothers, and in areas with less social deprivation. Across all subgroups and outcomes, the change in odds associated with heat waves ranged from no increase to a 7.9% increase. Heat‐related early term birth risk is enhanced among subgroups associated with socioeconomic disadvantage, but patterns of vulnerability were less consistent for preterm birth.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7q244n1

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact