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Updated: Oct 15, 2025
Assessment and Evaluation of the High Risk Neonate: The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale
Published on: August 25, 2014
Maternal language disparities in neonatal intensive care unit outcomes
Nikita S Kalluri1, Patrice Melvin2, Mandy B Belfort3
1Department of Newborn Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. nikita.kalluri@childrens.harvard.edu.
Objective:
To examine associations of maternal primary language with neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) outcomes (mother's milk at discharge, necrotizing enterocolitis [NEC], late-onset sepsis, weight gain) DESIGN: We performed a retrospective cohort study of mother-infant dyads (<34 weeks' gestation) in 9 NICUs (1/2016-12/2019), examining associations of maternal language (English [ref], Spanish, Other) with NICU outcomes, adjusting for birth weight for gestational age z-score, race/ethnicity, maternal age, and clustering by hospital.
Results:
Among 1402 mothers, 85% spoke English, 7% spoke Spanish, and 7% spoke another language. Compared to English, infants with Spanish-speaking mothers had slower growth (-0.34 z-score units [-0.58, -0.10]). Infants with other non-English-speaking mothers had increased mother's milk at discharge (aOR 1.48 [1.18, 1.85]), NEC (aOR 1.43 [1.05, 1.95]), late-onset sepsis (aOR 2.84) [1.67, 4.83] and slower growth (-0.17 z-score units [-0.29, -0.05]).
Conclusions:
After adjustments, preterm infants with non-English-speaking mothers had worse outcomes than infants with English-speaking mothers.
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