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Saifuddin Ahmed, MBBS, PhD, Michael A. Koenig, PhD and Rob Stephenson, PhD

Saifuddin Ahmed and Michael A. Koenig are with the Department of Population and Family Health Sciences, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. Rob Stephenson is with the Department of International Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to: Saifuddin Ahmed, MBBS, PhD, Department of Population and Family Health Sciences, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 615 N Wolfe St, #E462, Baltimore, MD 21205 (e-mail: sahmed{at}jhsph.edu).

Objective. We examined the effect of physical violence during pregnancy on perinatal and early-childhood mortality.

Methods. We estimated the prevalence of domestic violence during pregnancy among a population-based sample of 2199 women in Uttar Pradesh, India. We used a survival regression model to examine the risks for perinatal, neonatal, postneonatal, and early-childhood (aged 1–3 years) mortality by mother’s exposure to domestic violence, after we controlled for other sociodemographic and maternal health behavior risk factors.

Results. Eighteen percent of the women in our study experienced domestic violence during their last pregnancy. After we adjusted for other risk factors, births among mothers who had experienced domestic violence had risks for perinatal and neonatal mortality that were 2.59 (95% confidence interval [CI]=1.35, 4.95) and 2.37 (95% CI=1.21, 4.62) times higher, respectively, than births among mothers who had not experienced violence. We found no significant associations between domestic violence and either postneonatal or early-childhood mortality.

Conclusions. Domestic violence is a significant risk factor for perinatal and neonatal mortality.

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