Pregnancy health and perinatal outcomes among Pacific Islander women in the United States and US Affiliated Pacific Islands: Protocol for a scoping review

• Published in: PloS one 2022-01, Vol.17 (1), p.e0262010
• Main Authors: Suss, Rachel, Mahoney, Madison, Arslanian, Kendall J, Nyhan, Kate, Hawley, Nicola L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Asian; Asian Americans; Bibliographic data bases; Biology and Life Sciences; Clinical trials; Data collection; Demographic aspects; Ethnicity; Female; Hawaii; Health aspects; Hispanic Americans; Humans; Islands; Librarians; Literature reviews; Maternal mortality; Medical libraries; Medicine and Health Sciences; Minority & ethnic groups; Minority women; Morbidity; Mothers; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; Oceanian Americans; Pacific Islander people; Patient outcomes; People and Places; Population; Population studies; Population-based studies; Pregnancy; Pregnancy Outcome; Pregnancy, Complications of; Public health; Review Literature as Topic; Subject indexing; Trends; United States; White people; Womens health
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0262010

This scoping review examines the literature on pregnancy and perinatal outcomes among Pacific Islander women in the United States (U.S.) and U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. Our aim was to identify research that disaggregated Pacific Islanders from other population groups. We conducted a systematic search of MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), and PsycINFO (Ovid) databases and a hand-search of grey literature. Forty-eight articles published between January 2010 and June 2020 were included. The majority of studies were conducted in Hawaii and utilized clinical record data. Infant outcomes were more commonly reported than maternal outcomes. We highlighted several limitations of the existing literature that included aggregation of Pacific Islanders with Asian American and other ethnic groups; limited comparison between Pacific Islander sub-groups; inadequate definitions of the nationality and ethnic composition of Pacific Islander groups; a lack of hypothesis-driven primary data collection and clinical trials; and underrepresentation of Pacific Islanders in population-based studies. Researchers should address these limitations to improve pregnancy and perinatal outcomes among Pacific Islanders, who comprise the second fastest growing ethnic minority in the U.S.