Mobility before and during pregnancy and its relationships with birth outcomes among Twitter users

Keywords: Mobility, pregnancy, birth, geotagged social media
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 11

Abstract

Previous studies of mobility during pregnancy mainly focus on the implication of residential mobility on the possible environmental exposure misclassification. However, the pattern of mobility before and during pregnancy as well as its relationships with birth outcomes are not well studied. The prevalence of geotagged social media data and its possible link to the public health registries provide great opportunities to explore users’ mobility at a finer spatio-temporal scale and improve our understanding of its relationships with various health outcomes. In this study, we identified a cohort of 82 new parents (35 mothers and 47 fathers) in Georgia by matching geotagged Twitter data and state birth registries at the individual level based on spatial, temporal, birth, and maternal information. With this cohort, we will use the geotagged tweets to measure and compare the mobility before and during each trimester of pregnancy among different population groups defined by parent role (mother or father), age, race, and socioeconomic status. Then, we will investigate how the mobility before and during each trimester of pregnancy is related to the preterm births and low birth weight. Although the sample in relatively small, this study is expected to demonstrate the feasibility of such applications of linked geotagged social media and health registries. Also, this study will shed light on the differences in mobility between mothers and fathers during different phases of pregnancy and how it is related to different birth outcomes.