Objective The purpose of this study w as to examine racialethnic disparities in stress ful life events before and during pregnancy and to assess the re lationship between stressful life events and racial -ethnic disparities in preterm birth.Study design Using data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System,we conducted a ret-rospective cohort analysis of a samp le of 33,542women from 19states who were delivered of a live -born infant in2000.Principal component analysis was used to group 13stressful life events into 4stress c onstructs:emotional,fi-nancial,partner -related,and trau matic.Racialethnic disparities in stressful life event s were assessed with the use of bivariate and multivariate regre ssion analyses.The con-tribution of stressful life events t o racial -ethnic disparities in preterm birth was evaluated with t he use of stepwise re-gression model and interaction term s.Results Black women and American Indian /Alaska Native w omen reported the highest number of stressful life eve nts in the 12months before delivery.Compared with non -Hispanic white wom-en,black women were 24%more likely t o report emotionalstressors,35%more likely to report financial stressors,163%more likely to report partner -r elated stressors,and83%more likely to report traumatic s tressors.The addition of stress constructs to the stepwise regression model mini-mally affected the association betw een race -ethnicity and preterm birth,and none of the stress constructs were sig-nificantly associated with preterm birth.There were no significant interaction effects between race -ethnicity and stress on preterm birth,except for a modest effect between black race and traumatic stressors.Conclusion There are significant racial -ethnic disparities in the experience of stressful life events before and dur ing pregnancy.Stressful life events do not appear to contribute significantly to racial -ethnic disparities in prete rm birth.
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