“We typically focus on the immediate effects of the Covid-19 pandemic,” says CPI affiliate Florencia Torche, “but unfortunately it will also have enduring long-term effects on the health and wellbeing of the next generation of Americans.” Why is this? As Florencia went on to discuss, prenatal exposure to large-scale health and economic shocks can alter health at birth, which in turn affects cognition, education, and earnings later in life. As a result, the effects of the pandemic could last decades. Given the unequal impacts of the pandemic, the consequences of Covid-19 on infant health are likely stronger among vulnerable racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. Thus the pandemic could exacerbate already wide inequalities in infant health in the United States.
With funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, Torche is examining the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on infant health and investigating disparities by maternal and community characteristics. Using state-level administrative data on births occurring in the United States, Torche and her collaborators aim to provide a comprehensive assessment of the real-time consequences of Covid-19 and reduce the risk to vulnerable populations. Collaborators on this project include professors Jenna Nobles and Felix Elwert at the University of Wisconsin, and Doctor Deirdre Lyell, professor of maternal-fetal medicine also at Stanford.
This research builds on Torche’s research agenda that examines the impact of prenatal exposure on individual health and wellbeing. See more:
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