Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Nevada lagging in prenatal care

Pregnant Nevadans in 1998 were less educated and less likely to receive adequate prenatal care than the national average, according to a study released today.

But there also was a sharp decline from 1990 to 1998 in the percentage of births to Nevada women who smoked during pregnancy.

Those were among the key findings in the report on births co-authored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids Count project in Baltimore and the nonprofit Child Trends research center in Washington, D.C. The 1998 figures were the latest available.

Richard Wertheimer, one of the study's authors, said he hoped states would use the report to shore up areas of weakness. But he also conceded that the study did not attempt to explain the reasons behind trends in each state.

"What I'm hoping for is that for those categories where you're not doing as well as other states, that you find out why that is," he said. "For solutions you might want to look at other states that have a better performance."

The authors also compared Las Vegas with 49 large metropolitan areas. In most cases, Las Vegas came out better against other cities than Nevada did when compared to other states.

Nevada, for instance, ranked 48th in 1998 with 28.3 percent of births to women with less than 12 years of education. The national average was 21.9 percent. But Las Vegas ranked 23rd in that category with 24.1 percent, compared with the 50-city average of 23.7 percent.

Las Vegas resident Marlys Morton, Nevada's Kids Count coordinator, said the state's lofty high school dropout rate and the availability of service sector jobs that do not require much education factored into Nevada's ranking. Morton also said it was possible that Nevada's figures were influenced by pregnant women who moved to the state from elsewhere.

"Service sector jobs are easy to get," Morton said. "But there should be more emphasis on education to get kids to complete high school."

Nevada also ranked 48th in 1998 with 7 percent of births to women receiving late or no prenatal care, compared with 3.9 percent nationally. The statewide percentage actually declined from 8.1 percent in 1990. But the decline was more pronounced in Las Vegas, where the percentage dropped from 11 percent in 1990 to 5.9 percent in 1998.

Ann Lynch, spokeswoman for Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, attributed the decline in part to the Baby Your Baby program supported by her hospital and other health care providers, as well as the state. The program encourages early prenatal care and includes a telephone hotline that links pregnant low-income women with physicians.

"A lot of uninsured people who get pregnant think they cannot afford prenatal care," Lynch said. "So we put them into Medicaid with doctors who can see them."

Births to Nevada women who smoked during pregnancy dropped from 20.1 percent in 1990 to 12.8 percent in 1998, a decline similar to that experienced in Las Vegas. Lynch and Morton attributed the decline to increased public education about the negative effects smoking can have on pregnancies.

"The big push to stop smoking has been among young people, and they are the ones who have babies," Lynch said.

The study also found that the proportion of Nevada births to Hispanics doubled from 15 percent in 1990 to 30 percent in 1998, while the percentage of births to whites "decreased markedly." That trend was consistent with statistics that revealed the rapid growth of the Hispanic population in Nevada during the past decade.

In five other categories in the study -- teen births, repeat teen births, births to unmarried women, low-birthweight births and preterm births -- Nevada was at about the national average in 1998.

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