Date of Conferral

2021

Degree

Doctor of Public Health (DrPH)

School

Public Health

Advisor

Jennifer Edwards

Abstract

The non-medical use of prescription pain relievers has increased remarkably, posing social and public health concerns particularly in developed countries such as the United States. The management of pain experienced by pregnant women poses a challenge to clinicians considering the effects of the regimen on unborn babies. Guided by the health belief model, which aims to predict health-related behavior in terms of certain health beliefs and explain change and behavior maintenance as well as to guide health behavior interventions, this cross-sectional study aimed to understand the associations between misusing pain relievers and social determinants of health such as education level and race in pregnant women done using secondary analysis of data from a countrywide survey, National Survey on Drug Use and Health of 2016. These variables were dichotomized before running the binary logistic regression. A final study sample of 732 pregnant women were included, and 11.5% misused prescription pain relievers. Over 85% were non-African-American with most aged between 18 and 44, and over 82% had a high school diploma and above. Hydrocodone was the most misused prescription pain reliever. The regression showed that African-American women have a lower probability of misusing prescription pain relievers (Exp.(B) 0.06). Targeted interventions will use this data to address this public health concern among pregnant women therefore aiming to achieve Healthy People 2030 resulting in positive social change.

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