{"id":5769,"date":"2021-05-07T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nchstats.com\/?p=5769"},"modified":"2021-05-07T09:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T13:30:00","slug":"podcast-effects-of-the-pandemic-on-births-in-new-york-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/2021\/05\/07\/5769\/","title":{"rendered":"PODCAST: Effects of the Pandemic on Births in New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"

STATCAST, MAY 2021: DISCUSSION WITH ELIZABETH GREGORY, STATISTICIAN, ABOUT HEALTHY PEOPLE INITIATIVE.<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/pressroom\/podcasts\/2021\/20210507\/20210507.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

\"podcast-icon\"HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 Elizabeth Gregory is a health scientist with the CDC\u2019s National Center for Health Statistics.\u00a0 Elizabeth has authored a new\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0examining the effects of the pandemic on births in New York City, one of the hardest-hit areas by COVID-19.\u00a0 The study looked at changes in the percentage of births to women who are residents of New York City but who gave birth outside the city.\u00a0 The data covered the period between 2018-2019 and 2019-2020.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 So this is a different study than what we usually get from NCHS.\u00a0 Can you explain why you chose this topic?<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH GREGORY:<\/strong>\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 Early on during the height of the pandemic in New York City in 2020 there were a lot of news stories about residents leaving the city and busy hospitals with a brief ban on support persons during labor and delivery at some hospitals.\u00a0 So we decided to take a look at what are these things resulted in women going out of the city to give birth.<\/p>\n

HOST:\u00a0<\/strong>Now a lot of people are anxiously awaiting new data from 2021 to see if there were any major changes in fertility due to the pandemic, but your report is showing really that the pandemic did impact births in New York, at least from a health care utilization, from a delivery perspective, is that correct?<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH GREGORY:<\/strong>\u00a0 So we found that from 2019 to 2020 the percentage of New York City residents giving birth outside the city increased overall for all months from March through November, peaking in April and May.\u00a0 And the timing of these increases in these out-of-city births correspond with the height of the early pandemic in New York City.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 is there any indication that these patterns were also true for other cities that were hard hit that in the early stages of the pandemic?<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH GREGORY:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0We didn\u2019t look at any other cities \u2013 but this would be something that would be really interesting to look at.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 Is there any indication whether these New York City residents were just going across the state line and into New Jersey or Connecticut to have their babies or were they actually traveling further than that? Do you have any information on that?<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH GREGORY:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0So this is also another thing that be really interesting to look at but for this report we didn\u2019t specifically look at where the out-of-city births were occurring.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 NCHS of course is also releasing their annual births report on Wednesday and there will be state data and also data for New York City available soon.\u00a0 Now what happens data-wise in the situation your study focuses on \u2013 so for example if a New York City woman goes to New Jersey to give birth does that count as a New Jersey birth or is it still a New York birth?<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH GREGORY:<\/strong>\u00a0 So birth certificates are filed in the state where the birth occurred but are usually looked at by the mother\u2019s state of residence for NCHS reports.\u00a0 So in this report, a birth to a mother that lived in New York City occurring outside of the city will be considered a birth to a New York City resident.\u00a0 And in this report it would just be classified as an out-of-city birth.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0Did we see a surge in births in these neighboring states like New Jersey or Connecticut for 2020?<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH GREGORY:<\/strong>\u00a0 So we didn\u2019t specifically look at where the out-of-city births were occurring but maybe that\u2019s something that could be looked at in the future.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 So what are some of the conclusions that you\u2019ve drawn from this research?<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH GREGORY:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well from 2019 to 2020 the percent of New York City residents giving birth outside the city increased overall from March through November, peaking in April and May, with the timing of the increases in these out-of-city births corresponding with the height of the early pandemic in New York City.\u00a0 And additionally, the overall rise in out-of-city births is largely the result of increases among non-Hispanic white women while increases were less pronounced for births to non-Hispanic black and Hispanic residents.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0Are you planning any other similar geographic studies based on the 2020 data?<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH GREGORY:<\/strong>\u00a0 We currently have a report in the works that will be looking at whether there were any changes between 2019 and 2020 in the percentage of births by whether the mother was born inside or outside the U.S.\u00a0 I just wanted to mention that we are also working on another report about home births, just to see whether there was a change in the percentage of home births that were occurring in the U.S. from 2019 to 2020.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 Elizabeth Gregory\u2019s new study was released on the same day that the full-year 2020 birth statistics for the U.S. were released.\u00a0 These new data were based on over 99% of birth certificates issued in the U.S. during the year, and were featured in a new report that had a number of noteworthy findings:<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s general fertility rate, which is the number of births per 1,000 women age 15-44, reached another record low in 2020, dropping 4% from 2019.\u00a0 The total number of births in 2020 also fell 4%, to 3,605,201 \u2013 the sixth straight year the number of births declined.<\/p>\n

The new report also revealed that births in the U.S. continue to be at below replacement levels, based on another decline in the total fertility rate.\u00a0 Birth rates declined for females of all age groups except two:\u00a0 adolescents age 10-14 and women age 45-49.<\/p>\n

The birth rate for teenagers age 15\u201319 declined by 8% in 2020 to 15.3 births per 1,000 women in that age group.\u00a0 The teen birth rate has declined every year going all the way back to 1991 except for two \u2013 2006 and 2007.\u00a0 The rates in 2020 declined for both younger teens age 15\u201317 and older teens age 18\u201319.<\/p>\n

Nearly one-third of all births in 2020 were by cesarean delivery, and over one-fourth of births were low-risk cesarean deliveries.\u00a0 Also, the preterm birth rate in the U.S. declined in 2020 for the first time since 2014, to just over 10% of all births in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STATCAST, MAY 2021: DISCUSSION WITH ELIZABETH GREGORY, STATISTICIAN, ABOUT HEALTHY PEOPLE INITIATIVE. https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/pressroom\/podcasts\/2021\/20210507\/20210507.htm HOST:\u00a0 Elizabeth Gregory is a health scientist with the CDC\u2019s National Center for Health Statistics.\u00a0 Elizabeth has authored a new\u00a0study\u00a0examining the effects of the pandemic on births in New York City, one of the hardest-hit areas by COVID-19.\u00a0 The study looked at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47309,61966,63705,63724],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}