Associations between residential greenness and preterm birth

Associations between residential greenness and preterm birth
Nasim sadat pajohanfar ,^1,* Mohammad Miri ,² Saide Mehrabadi ,³ Roghaieh Rahmani ,⁴
1. MSc student of midwifery, Student Research Committee, Department of Midwifery, School of medical, Gonabad University of Medical Sciences, Gonabad, Iran
2. Non-Communicable Diseases Research Center, Department of Environmental Health, School of Health, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Sabzevar, Iran
3. Department of Midwifery, Department of Midwifery, School of medical, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Sabzevar, Iran
4. Social Development and Health Promotion Research Center, Department of Midwifery, School of medical, Gonabad University of Medical Sciences, Gonabad, Iran
Introduction: Introduction: Recently, environmental factors have been suggested as a determinant of social health. Recent studies have shown that access to green space can affect pregnancy outcomes. In the present review study, we conducted a systematic review of all relevant studies with the aim of investigating the relationship between green space and preterm delivery.
Methods: Method: In this study, a review was conducted to obtain relevant studies from the English databases Pubmed, Scopus, Web of science and Persian databases Iran Medex, SID and Magiran with the English and Persian keywords green space and preterm birth with all possible search combinations.
Results: Results: Out of 6964 articles, 5 cross-sectional articles with inclusion criteria were reviewed. In qualitative evaluation of articles with STROBE index, 4 studies were of high quality and 1 study wewr of medium quality. In general, in these studies, counting and tree canopy indices, environmental quality index (EQI), Census Area Unit (CAU) and Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) indices have been used to evaluated green space exposure. No association was found between green space and preterm birth in most studies, and the rest of the studies showed conflicting results on the protective effect of green space on preterm birth.
Conclusion: Conclusion: According to the study findings, there is no relationship between green space and preterm delivery. Due to the existence of studies with conflicting results, it is suggested that more studies be done in this area.
Keywords: Census Area Unit, preterm birth, greenness