Complaints about excessive use of police force in women's neighborhoods and subsequent perinatal and cardiovascular health

There are substantial, unexplained racial disparities in women's health. Some of the most pronounced involve elevated rates of preterm delivery (PTD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) among Black women. We hypothesized that stress associated with excessive use of force by police may contribute to these disparities. In two prospective cohorts derived from electronic health records (pregnancy cohort, N= 67,976; CVD cohort, N= 6773), we linked formal complaints of excessive police force in patients' neighborhoods with health outcomes. Exposed Black women were 1.19 times as likely to experience PTD [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.04 to 1.35] and 1.42 times as likely to develop CVD (95% CI: 1.12 to 1.79), even after adjustment for neighborhood disadvantage and homicide. The excess risks of PTD were also observed in maternal fixed-effects analyses comparing births to the same woman. These findings suggest police violence may be an unrecognized contributor to health inequity for Black women.

Data on formal complaints filed against Chicago police are publicly available through the Invisible Institute’s Citizens Police Data Project (https://cpdp.co/). Data on block group characteristics are available through the ACS. Study data derived from EHRs are not available because of their sensitive nature. However, limited, deidentified study data may be obtained pursuant to a data use agreement. A deidentified dataset can be used to generate similar (but not identical) results since a deidentified dataset may not contain all of the variables used in the analysis.