Biological Embedding of Chronic Stress Across Two Generations Within Marginalized Communities

Significant racial health disparities in infant mortality, preterm birth, and infant neurodevelopment exist in the United States. These disparities highlight a critical public health problem: Children of color are at a developmental disadvantage before birth. In this article, we describe how pregnant women from marginalized communities are disproportionately more likely to experience chronic stress in the form of discrimination, historical trauma, and acculturation. We integrate these understudied forms of chronic stress into allostatic load and prenatal programming models to describe how they can affect the health of two generations: the pregnant woman and her child. We describe psychophysiological ramifications of this early-life stress in infants of color. The prenatal programming field has largely ignored the experiences of women of color, and we highlight the need for researchers to include, or focus exclusively on, diverse samples in their research to reduce disparities that are evident at birth.