State-level Policy Bundles and Immigrant Maternal Health Inequalities in the United States

This study examines how variation in state-level immigrant policies affects maternal health outcomes among immigrant populations in the United States. Applying a policy bundle approach, this study first identifies supportive and restrictive policies to capture the complexity of state-level contexts. It then evaluates the impacts of four immigrant policy bundles on access to prenatal care, using natality data from the National Center for Health Statistics between 2015 and 2019. The logistic regression model resulted that the education policy bundle, one of the supportive policy types, was significantly associated with improved early prenatal care among immigrant pregnant women. These findings confirm the critical role of education-related policies in prioritizing equitable maternal health outcomes, highlighting the importance of supportive social policy interventions from the earliest stages of pregnancy for immigrant communities.