Association of maternal physical and mental health characteristics with the hazard of having any medical condition or disability in Australian children: A 15-year birth cohort study

Kabir Ahmad; Gail M Ormsby; Enamul Kabir; Rasheda Khanam

doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101385

Association of maternal physical and mental health characteristics with the hazard of having any medical condition or disability in Australian children: A 15-year birth cohort study

SSM Popul Health. 2023 Mar 21:22:101385. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101385. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Authors

Kabir Ahmad^{1

2}, Gail M Ormsby³, Enamul Kabir^{2

4}, Rasheda Khanam^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Business, Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, 4350, Australia.
² Centre for Health Research, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, 4350, Australia.
³ Independent Researcher, School of Education, Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, 4350, Australia.
⁴ School of Mathematics, Physics and Computing, Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, 4350, Australia.

Abstract

Any long-term medical condition or disability among children is a significant health issue. This study measured the incidence rate of any medical condition or disability among children from a nationally representative birth cohort, then used the random effect parametric survival regression model to assess whether the hazard of any medical condition or disability in children is associated with maternal physical and mental health characteristics (obesity, general health status, having a medical condition, stressful life events or mental illness). The study followed up 5019 children from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, assessing their time-to-event data from birth (2004) to 14 or 15 years of age (2018). The hazard rate of any medical condition or disability was 26.11 per 1000 person-years for all the children and 29.29 for the males-a noticeable gender difference. It was the highest (hazard rate: 62.90) among the children when their mothers had a medical condition, while the hazard rate was 22.40 per 1000 person-years among the children whose mothers had no medical conditions. The parametric panel regression results also suggested that the children of mothers with a medical condition during the 15-year study period were more likely to have a medical condition or disability (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.61, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.24-3.02) compared to the children of mothers with none. Similar trends were observed among children of mothers who had fair or poor general health (HR: 1.48, 95% CI: 1.15-1.91), obesity (HR: 1.40, 95% CI: 1.18-1.66) or experienced stressful life events (HR: 1.23, 95% CI: 1.06-1.43) over time compared to those whose mothers did not. These findings suggest that additional healthcare interventions targeting mothers with medical conditions, obesity, poor general health, or mental illness would help minimise the risk of medical conditions and disabilities among children.

Keywords: Child health; Disability; Hazard rate; Hazard ratio; Long-term health condition; Longitudinal study; Maternal health; Survival analysis.