Descripción del proyecto
El papel de la desigualdad social en el riesgo de aborto espontáneo y sus consecuencias
La pérdida espontánea del embarazo, es decir, el aborto espontáneo antes de las 24 semanas de gestación, afecta a alrededor del 25 % de las mujeres y puede causar problemas de salud mental y física. Aunque el estrés debido a las condiciones económicas o a los trabajos con mucha presión puede aumentar el riesgo de sufrir un aborto espontáneo, rara vez se ha investigado el papel de las desigualdades sociales en este riesgo. Del mismo modo, sabemos poco sobre los parámetros sociales que afectan al bienestar mental y físico de las mujeres tras un aborto espontáneo. El equipo del proyecto SOC-MISC, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, pretende colmar esta brecha del conocimiento utilizando datos procedentes de registros y encuestas de Finlandia, Francia y el Reino Unido. El objetivo es utilizar estos resultados para mejorar la salud de la población.
Objetivo
One in four women experience a miscarriage. Loss of pregnancy may affect fertility intentions and lead to adverse mental and physical health. Yet, we know little about how social inequalities affect the risk of miscarriage; how miscarriages may exacerbate existing social inequalities in population health; or how context shapes these experiences. One reason for this is poor quality of data, as miscarriages are often either underreported in surveys or only included in health registers if they require hospital care. Moreover, to date, sexual and reproductive health has often been ignored in life course epidemiology.
This proposal goes beyond the state-of-the-art by being the first comprehensive study of the patterns of social inequality in miscarriage and its outcomes. It reaches this goal by assessing the patterns of miscarriage underreporting in surveys before obtaining its estimates. It will make ground-breaking contributions by:
1) Analysing underreporting patterns of miscarriage and using this in further analyses to obtain more reliable results than before.
2) Showing how individual and family-level social inequalities affect miscarriage risk over the life course.
3) Establishing how mental and physical health consequences of miscarriage depend on one’s social background and may widen social inequalities in health.
4) Uncovering the role of national and sub-national context in social inequalities in miscarriage.
Unlike many previous studies based on small and outdated samples, I use longitudinal population registers and large representative surveys in Finland, France and the UK that are exceptionally rich in miscarriage, socioeconomic, other reproductive and health data, and can be triangulated to obtain more reliable results.
The project will lead to a significantly better understanding of a common reproductive experience affecting mental and physical wellbeing, and can help policy makers improve reproductive and population health.
Ámbito científico
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiology
- social sciencessociologydemographyfertility
- social sciencessociologysocial issuessocial inequalities
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencessocial biomedical sciencessexual health
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineobstetrics
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Institución de acogida
93322 Aubervilliers Cedex
Francia