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Low birth weight, intrauterine growth-retarded, and pre-term infants

A research strategy

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Abstract

Low birth weight, intrauterine growth retardation, and prematurity are overwhelming risk factors associated with infant mortality and morbidity. The lack of efficacious prenatal screening tests for these three outcomes illuminates the problems inherent in bivariate estimates of association. A biocultural strategy for research is presented, integrating societal and familial levels of analysis with the metabolic, immune, vascular, and neuroendocrine systems of the body. Policy decisions, it is argued, need to be based on this type of biocultural information in order to impact the difficult-to-change problems of low birth weight, intrauterine growth retardation, and prematurity.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma, 73019, Norman, OK

    Troy D. Abell

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The analysis and writing of this study was funded, in part, by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD RO1 HD 20511).

Troy D. Abell is associate professor of anthropology and adjunct associate professor of family medicine at the University of Oklahoma. His major interests are in the biocultural determinants of fetal growth and the epistemologic issues inherent in statistical reasoning in scientific inference and decision analysis.

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Abell, T.D. Low birth weight, intrauterine growth-retarded, and pre-term infants. Human Nature 3, 335–378 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02734055

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