Dataset Information

The Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS): A Preliminary Report on Selected Characteristics of Approximately 10 000 Pregnant Women Recruited During the First Year of the Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS) is an ongoing nationwide birth cohort study launched in January 2011. In this progress report, we present data collected in the first year to summarize selected maternal and infant characteristics.

Methods

In the 15 Regional Centers located throughout Japan, the expectant mothers were recruited in early pregnancy at obstetric facilities and/or at local government offices issuing pregnancy journals. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to the women during their first trimester and then again during the second or third trimester to obtain information on demographic factors, physical and mental health, lifestyle, occupation, environmental exposure, dwelling conditions, and socioeconomic status. Information was obtained from medical records in the first trimester and after delivery on medical history, including gravidity and related complications, parity, maternal anthropometry, and infant physical examinations.

Results

We collected data on a total of 9819 expectant mothers (mean age = 31.0 years) who gave birth during 2011. There were 9635 live births. The selected infant characteristics (singleton births, gestational age at birth, sex, birth weight) in the JECS population were similar to those in national survey data on the Japanese general population.

Conclusions

Our final birth data will eventually be used to evaluate the national representativeness of the JECS population. We hope the JECS will provide valuable information on the impact of the environment in which our children live on their health and development.

SUBMITTER: Michikawa T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4444500 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

The Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS): A Preliminary Report on Selected Characteristics of Approximately 10 000 Pregnant Women Recruited During the First Year of the Study.

Michikawa Takehiro T Nitta Hiroshi H Nakayama Shoji F SF Ono Masaji M Yonemoto Junzo J Tamura Kenji K Suda Eiko E Ito Hiroyasu H Takeuchi Ayano A Kawamoto Toshihiro T

Journal of epidemiology 20150425 6

<h4>Background</h4>The Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS) is an ongoing nationwide birth cohort study launched in January 2011. In this progress report, we present data collected in the first year to summarize selected maternal and infant characteristics.<h4>Methods</h4>In the 15 Regional Centers located throughout Japan, the expectant mothers were recruited in early pregnancy at obstetric facilities and/or at local government offices issuing pregnancy journals. Self-administered ques ...[more]

PMID: 25912098

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Project description:BackgroundPrevious studies revealed positive, negative, and no influence of social capital on the health outcomes of pregnant women. It was considered that such differences were caused by the disparities of outcome measures and sample sizes between studies. Our chief aim was to verify the positive influence of social capital on the health condition of pregnant women using established health outcome measures and large-scale nationwide survey data.MethodsWe employed questionnaire survey data from 79,210 respondents to the Japan Environment and Children's Study, and physical and mental component summary scores from the 8-Item Short-Form Health Survey as outcome measures. We estimated the effect of individual and neighborhood social capitals on physical and mental component summary scores. To consider the property that the richness of social capital would be generally determined by individual characteristics, and to estimate the causal influence of social capital on health without bias caused by said property, we adopted average treatment effect estimation with inverse probability weighting. Generally, average treatment effects are based on the difference of average outcomes between treated and untreated groups in an intervention. In this research, we reckoned individuals' different levels of social capital as a kind of non-randomized treatment for respective individuals, and we applied average treatment effect estimation. The analysis regarded pregnant women with the lowest level of social capital as untreated samples and women with other levels of social capitals as treated samples.ResultsFor mental component summary score, the maximum average treatment effects in the comparison between the lowest and highest levels of social capital were approximately 4.4 and 1.6 for individual and neighborhood social capital, respectively. The average treatment effects for the physical component summary score were negligible for both social capital types.ConclusionsSocial capital particularly contributes to improving mental component summary score in pregnant women. The likelihood of a mentally healthy pregnancy may be increased by enhancing social capital.

Dataset Information

The Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS): A Preliminary Report on Selected Characteristics of Approximately 10 000 Pregnant Women Recruited During the First Year of the Study.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

The Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS): A Preliminary Report on Selected Characteristics of Approximately 10 000 Pregnant Women Recruited During the First Year of the Study.

Similar Datasets

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