Amy Branum

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC · Office of the Center Director

Background and objectives: Although mortality rates are highest for infants of teens aged 15 to 19, no studies have examined the long-term trends by race and ethnicity, urbanicity, or maternal age. The objectives of this study were to examine trends and differences in mortality for infants of teens by race and ethnicity and urbanicity from 1996 to...

Rural-urban differences in maternal mortality ratios (MMR) in the United States have been difficult to measure in recent years due to the incremental adoption of a pregnancy status checkbox on death certificates. Using 1999-2017 mortality and birth data, we examined the impact of the pregnancy checkbox on MMRs by rural-urban residence (large urban,...

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected Hispanic or Latino, non-Hispanic Black (Black), non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN), and non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (NH/PI) populations in the United States. These populations have experienced higher rates of infection and mortality compared with the...

What is already known about this topic? As of October 15, 216,025 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported in the United States; however, this might underestimate the total impact of the pandemic on mortality. What is added by this report? Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths occurred from late January through October 3, 2020, with 198,081 (6...

Background: Pregnancy loss can have physical and psychological consequences for women and their families. Though a previous study described an increase in the risk of self-reported pregnancy loss from 1970 to 2000, more recent examinations from population-based data of US women are lacking. Methods: We used data from the 1995, 2002, 2006-2010, 2...

Objectives Early pregnancy detection is important for improving pregnancy outcomes as the first trimester is a critical window of fetal development; however, there has been no description of trends in timing of pregnancy awareness among US women. Methods We examined data from the 1995, 2002, 2006–2010 and 2011–2013 National Survey of Family Growth...

Objectives-This report describes prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) among women giving birth in 2014 for the 47-state and District of Columbia reporting areas that implemented the 2003 U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth by January 1, 2014.

Purpose: To evaluate the association between pregnancy loss history and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Methods: Pregnancy history was captured during a computer-assisted personal interview for 21,277 women surveyed in the National Survey of Family Growth (1995-2013). History of pregnancy loss (<20 weeks) at first parity was categorized in three way...

Objectives: To describe the contribution of whole fruit, including discrete types of fruit, to total fruit consumption and to investigate differences in consumption by sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: We analyzed data from 3129 youth aged 2 to 19 years from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2011 to 2012. Using the F...

Use of long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) declined between 1982 and 1988, remained stable through 2002, and then increased nearly five-fold in the last decade among women aged 15-44, from 1.5% in 2002 to 7.2% in 2011-2013. The percentage of women using LARCs has remained highest among women aged 25-34, with more than twice as many women...

Physicians and policy makers are increasingly interested in caffeine intake among children and adolescents in the advent of increasing energy drink sales. However, there have been no recent descriptions of caffeine or energy drink intake in the United States. We aimed to describe trends in caffeine intake over the past decade among US children and...

Purpose To increase physician knowledge, improve access to care and patient and family communication, and better the quality of obesity care in the community, we characterized the diets of U.S. children under age two, including transitions to solid food and diet differences by race and poverty status. Methods We included children <24 months of...

Unlabelled: This study aimed to estimate intake of individual polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), identify major dietary sources of PUFAs and estimate the proportion of individuals consuming fish among US children 12-60 months of age, by age and race and ethnicity. The study employed a cross-sectional design using US National Health and Nutrition...

Background: A minority of overweight or obese children are identified as such by a healthcare provider (HCP). The aim of this study was to examine characteristics of caregiver-reported HCP identification of overweight or obesity and whether it is associated with children's waist circumference (WC). Methods: This was an observational study using...

To describe the contribution of mixed dishes to vegetable consumption and to estimate vegetable intake according to specific types of vegetables and other foods among US children and adolescents. The 2003-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a nationally representative probability survey conducted in the USA. Civilian non...

Background: Maternal risk factors have been tabulated for women of childbearing age using defined age ranges. However, statistics for factors strongly related to age may be overly influenced by values for the youngest and oldest women in a range, because pregnancies are most likely for ages 20-35. Objective: This report evaluates adjustment meth...

Adequate folate and iron intake during pregnancy is critical for maternal and fetal health. No previous studies to our knowledge have reported dietary supplement use and folate status among pregnant women sampled in NHANES, a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey. We analyzed data on 1296 pregnant women who participated in NHANES from 1...

Among children with food allergy, we aim to describe differences in allergy severity by sociodemographic characteristics and potential differences in healthcare characteristics according to food allergy severity. Using the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health, we identified children with food allergies based on parental report (n = 4,657). Foo...

There is increasing evidence that in utero effects of excessive gestational weight gain may result in increased weight in children; however, studies have not controlled for shared genetic or environmental factors between mothers and children. Using 2,758 family groups from the Collaborative Perinatal Project, the authors examined the association of...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of covariates in identifying birth records with implausible values of gestational age. Birthweight distributions for births with early reported gestational ages are markedly bimodal, suggesting a mixture of two distributions. Most births form a normal-shaped left-hand (primary) distribution...

The goals were to estimate the prevalence of food allergy and to describe trends in food allergy prevalence and health care use among US children. A cross-sectional survey of data on food allergy among children <18 years of age, as reported in the 1997-2007 National Health Interview Survey, 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey...

The sex ratio in the USA has declined over recent decades, resulting in fewer male births. Concurrent changes in the childbearing population may have influenced the sex ratio, including increases in multiple births, improvements in perinatal survival and increased Hispanic births. Data from the US natality files (1981-2006) were analyzed to determi...

The role of intergenerational influences on age at menarche has not been explored far beyond the association between mothers' and daughters' menarcheal ages. Small size at birth and childhood obesity have been associated with younger age at menarche, but the influence of maternal overweight or obesity on daughters' age at menarche has not been thor...

KEY FINDINGS: In 2007, approximately 3 million children under age 18 years (3.9%) were reported to have a food or digestive allergy in the previous 12 months. From 1997 to 2007, the prevalence of reported food allergy increased 18% among children under age 18 years. Children with food allergy are two to four times more likely to have other related...

We evaluated whether the decline of the racial disparity in preterm birth during the last decade was commensurate with a decline in the contribution of preterm birth to the infant mortality gap. We used linked files of 1990 and 2000 data on US infant births and deaths to partition the gap between Black and White infant mortality rates into differen...

There is a well-known interaction between maternal age and parity in the risk of adverse perinatal outcomes, including preterm birth (PTB), such that young multiparae and older primiparae have greater risks. Yet it is not known whether this interaction varies by race/ethnicity. US birth records for singleton births from 2000 to 2002 were used to ex...

As teen singleton pregnancy is associated with higher risks of adverse birth outcome, and twin pregnancy, regardless of maternal age, may result in poor outcome, teens pregnant with twins may represent a particularly vulnerable group. However, little has been documented regarding teen twin pregnancy outcome. To characterize the risk of very preterm...

Vital statistics data have been used to track maternal and child health in the United States since the early 1900s. The breadth of information collected on birth and death certificates coupled with advances in computer processing have made possible critical perinatal and obstetric research. These enhancements also facilitate potentially problematic...

There is no universal agreement on the definition of anaphylaxis or the criteria for diagnosis. In July 2005, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network convened a second meeting on anaphylaxis, which included representatives from 16 different organizations or government bodies, including repre...

There is no universal agreement on the definition of anaphylaxis or the criteria for diagnosis. In July 2005, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network convened a second meeting on anaphylaxis, which included representatives from 16 different organizations or government bodies, including repre...

For singleton births, parity can modify the effect of maternal age on birth outcomes such as low birthweight and preterm birth; however, it is unknown whether this relationship exists for twin births. As the rate of twin births increases among older women, it is important to understand how parity may influence the relationship between maternal age...

Increasing use of fertility drugs is considered the primary cause for the recent increase in dizygotic twinning in developed countries. However, dizygotic twinning has also been related to obesity in foreign populations. We sought to confirm this relationship in U.S. pregnancies, which predated widespread use of fertility drugs. We analyzed 51,783...

To examine the gestational age-specific distribution of twin birth weight discordance. We analyzed all liveborn twin sets between 28 and 40 weeks' gestation from the United States 1995-1998 Multiple Matched Birth Data Set compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics. We calculated the 50th and 95th percentiles of birth weight discordance a...

Increasing recognition that children may be more susceptible than adults to environmental exposures and that they experience potentially life-long consequences of such exposures has led to widespread support for a large new cohort study in the United States. In this article, we propose a framework for a new cohort study of children, with follow-up...

To estimate the association between birth weight discordance and neonatal mortality controlling for the effects of fetal growth, and to understand the differences in the incidence of mortality between larger and smaller infants. This analysis is based on the National Center for Health Statistics matched multiple birth data set file containing all t...

Low birthweight (LBW) and preterm birth are primary risk factors for infant morbidity and mortality in the US. With increasing multiple births and delayed childbearing, it is important to examine the separate contributions of these characteristics to the increases in LBW and preterm birth rates. US natality records from 1981, 1990 and 1998 were use...

Typescript. Thesis (master's)--University of South Carolina, 2000. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-49).