Risk and strength: determining the impact of area-level racial bias and protective factors on birth outcomes.

项目摘要 在早产和低出生体重方面，种族和民族之间存在着巨大和持续的差异。个人层面 风险因素不能完全解释观察到的差异。越来越多的证据表明， 种族偏见在解释这些差异，但我们目前缺乏的措施，方法，和调查结果， 经验地评估其影响。这项研究将推动这三个领域的研究。我们将 利用在线和社交媒体数据以及机器学习模型， 偏见，并实施强有力的研究设计，以确定地区层面的种族偏见是否影响出生 结果。我们的调查小组由流行病学、健康差异、 机器学习，社交媒体数据，生物统计学和社区参与研究-是唯一适合 落实学习目标。我们的具体目标是：1）跟踪和检测地区层面种族偏见的变化， 在这些时间点确定当地和国家种族相关事件，2）确定变化的影响， 地区水平的种族偏见对不良出生结果的变化，和3）确定不良出生的保护因素 成果。因为我们的数据是在美国各地反复收集的，我们可以明确地 解释时间趋势和地点效应。这项拟议中的研究使用了新的数据来捕捉种族歧视的趋势。 偏见与复杂的机器学习模型，并代表了一个关键的进步，在调查 出生结果的种族差异。

PROJECT SUMMARY There are large and persistent racial and ethnic disparities in preterm birth and low birth weight. Individual-level risk factors do not fully explain the observed disparities. There is increasing evidence for the role of area-level racial bias in explaining these disparities, but we currently lack both the measures, methods, and findings to empirically evaluate its influence. The proposed research will advance the research in all 3 areas. We will be using online and social media data and machine learning models to create two measures of area-level racial bias and implement a robust research design to determine whether area-level racial bias impacts birth outcomes. Our investigative team—comprised of experts in the field of epidemiology, health disparities, machine learning, social media data, biostatistics, and community engaged research—is uniquely suited to implement the study aims. Our Specific Aims are to 1) track and detect changes in area-level racial bias and identify local and national race-related events during these time points, 2) determine the impact of changes in area-level racial bias on changes in adverse birth outcomes, and 3) identify protective factors for adverse birth outcomes. Because our data is collected repeatedly and finely across the United States, we can explicitly account for temporal trends and place effects. The proposed study uses new data to capture trends in racial bias with sophisticated machine learning models, and represents a critical advancement in the investigation of racial disparities in birth outcomes.