Parental Leave Policy as a Strategy to Improve Outcomes among Premature Infants

Greenfield, Jennifer C.; Klawetter, Susanne

doi:10.1093/hsw/hlv079

Cited by 19 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In this area our findings also dovetail with an emerging discussion across multiple disciplines, highlighting the equity implications of upstream policies like PPL in the United States. 18,26,[42][43][44] Building on this literature, our results point to the need for supervisor training as a strategy for improving parental health and wellbeing. Additionally, given the importance of gender in our participants' PPL experiences, and the inability of our focus groups to tease these differences apart, we recommend that future studies do more to explore potential gender disparities.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Employee Experiences with a Newly Adopted Paid Parental Leave Policy: Equity Considerations for Policy Implementation

Richardson¹,

Steeves-Reece²,

Martin

et al. 2019

Health Equity

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Purpose: Paid parental leave (PPL) policies offer immense opportunity to enhance health equity by providing financial stability to workers and promoting the health of families in the United States. Working in partnership with a local county government, which recently adopted a paid leave policy, we engaged in a qualitative substudy to enhance our understanding of how workers perceived and experienced the policy across levels of the socioecological framework. Methods: Working in partnership with Multnomah County, a large public-sector employer in Portland, OR that recently adopted a PPL policy, we collected qualitative data through focus groups with employees. Data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically. Results: We conducted seven focus groups with county employees (N = 35) in the fall of 2017. Three major themes emerged from the focus group data: intersectional inequities, disparities by department, and uneven benefits. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the inequities of experience with the PPL policy across employees at individual, organization, and environmental levels. These findings offer insight and guidance for entities considering the adoption and implementation of such policies to consider concrete steps to enhance equity of access and experience.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Employee Experiences with a Newly Adopted Paid Parental Leave Policy: Equity Considerations for Policy Implementation

Richardson¹,

Steeves-Reece²,

Martin

et al. 2019

Health Equity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Further, providing supports to families could facilitate visitation and skin-to-skin contact by partners, an area for future research. At a state level, longer, paid maternity leave policies should be tailored to the unique needs and burdens faced by mothers with preterm infants [54]. Our study also highlights the beneficial role of social workers for parents of preterm infants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Recent guidelines for social workers in the NICU have focused largely on addressing maternal and paternal mental health challenges. However, social workers can serve as a first line of defense in tackling structural barriers and facilitating caregiving [54, 55]. Expanding the role of social workers to address a range of logistical challenges may be a valuable policy tool.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caregiving can be costly: A qualitative study of barriers and facilitators to conducting kangaroo mother care in a US tertiary hospital neonatal intensive care unit

Lewis

Andrews

Shenberger

et al. 2019

BMC Pregnancy Childbirth

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Background Preterm birth is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children under five and often requires a newborn to have an extended stay in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Maternal engagement, such as visiting the NICU to provide kangaroo mother care (KMC), can improve outcomes for preterm infants but requires significant investment of time and resources. This study sought to understand barriers and facilitators to provision of KMC in the NICU. Methods We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with mothers of preterm infants ( N = 20) at a large academic medical center in Massachusetts. A series of open-ended interview questions were designed to elicit all aspects of mothers’ experiences and to understand how these experiences influence provision of KMC. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis to identify themes in the data with a focus on the barriers and facilitators of KMC provision in the NICU. Results Findings show that engaging in KMC is heavily influenced by the mental, emotional, and physical effects of preterm birth on the birth mother, such as stress around preterm birth and difficulty recovering from birth. These challenges are compounded by structural barriers such as costly accommodations, unreliable transportation, lack of child care, and inadequate maternity leave policies that limit the frequency and duration of KMC and parental ability to provide care. Conclusions A complex array of mental, emotional, physical, and structural factors determine a mother’s ability to visit the NICU and provide kangaroo mother care. Providing social supports, such as improved maternity leave policies and reliable hospital access through child care, accommodation, and transportation services, may address the structural barriers that inhibit KMC, reduce burdensome costs, and improve the health of mothers and their preterm infants.

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“…For example, 13.8% of black babies are born prematurely compared to 9% of non-Hispanic white babies (Burris et al, 2019). Parents of premature infants are more likely to need family leave, and for longer periods (Greenfield & Klawetter, 2016). Hispanics have a younger age distribution and higher fertility rates than other groups (Mathews & Hamilton, 2019), which may increase their need for family leave.…”

Section: Implications For Racial/ethnic Inequalities In the Capabilitmentioning

confidence: 99%

How much would family and medical leave cost workers in the US? Racial/ethnic variation in economic hardship under unpaid and paid policies

Joshi

Baldiga

Earle

et al. 2019

Community, Work & Family

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Using a capability approach, this study assesses economic constraints under the current US national unpaid family and medical leave (FML) policy compared to a hypothetical national paid FML policy for all full-year workers. Existing literature documents gender and class differences in barriers to FML use, but there is limited research on racial/ethnic minority workers. Our results indicate that if FML policy changed from unpaid to paid leave, black workers would gain a greater percentage of family income back relative to white workers, due in part to their larger wage contributions to family income. However, moving to a paid FML policy has a lower likelihood of preventing short-term economic hardship for black and Hispanic workers, compared to white workers. Our findings are consistent with studies, of which there are few, that show that paid FML can decrease, but not eliminate, disparities in black and Hispanic working mothers' capability to take up parental leave and use leave for longer durations. Therefore, further design modifications to FML policy are needed for paid leave to be fully protective of all workers who need to take leave without facing economic hardship. RESUMEN

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Parental Leave Policy as a Strategy to Improve Outcomes among Premature Infants

Cited by 19 publications

References 27 publications

Employee Experiences with a Newly Adopted Paid Parental Leave Policy: Equity Considerations for Policy Implementation

Employee Experiences with a Newly Adopted Paid Parental Leave Policy: Equity Considerations for Policy Implementation

Caregiving can be costly: A qualitative study of barriers and facilitators to conducting kangaroo mother care in a US tertiary hospital neonatal intensive care unit

How much would family and medical leave cost workers in the US? Racial/ethnic variation in economic hardship under unpaid and paid policies

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