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This chapter examines birth outcomes of patients enrolled in Familias Sanas (Healthy Families), an educational intervention designed to reduce health disadvantages of low-income, immigrant Latina mothers by providing social support during and after pregnancy.

Using a randomized control-group design, the project recruited 440 pregnant Latina women, 88% of whom were first generation. Birth outcomes were collected through medical charts and analyzed using regression analysis to evaluate if there were any differences between patients enrolled in Familias Sanas compared to those patients who followed a typical prenatal course.

Control and intervention groups were found to be similar with regard to demographic characteristics. In addition, we did not observe a decrease in rate of a number of common pregnancy-related complications. Likewise, rates of operative delivery were similar between the two groups as were fetal weight at delivery and use of regional anesthesia at delivery.

The lack of improvements in birth outcomes for this study was perhaps because this social support intervention was not significant enough to override long-standing stressors such as socioeconomic status, poor nutrition, genetics, and other environmental stressors.

This study was set in an inner-city, urban hospital with a large percentage of patients being of Hispanic descent. The study itself is a randomized controlled clinical trial, and data were collected directly from electronic medical records by physicians.

The purpose of this study is to identify the association between risky sexual behaviors and migration intentions among adolescents living in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Data were collected by self‐administered questionnaires to students enrolled in an alternative schooling system in Guanajuato, Mexico, during the school year of 2006‐2007. The sample size for this study includes 538 unmarried students, 35 percent male, ages 14‐19. Ordinal logistic regression is used to estimate the odds of engaging in risky sexual behaviors.

The results reveal that male adolescents with higher intentions to migrate have significantly higher odds of engaging in risky sexual behaviors than both males who are less interested in migrating and females, regardless of their migration intentions.

Interventions on both sides of the US/Mexico border are needed in order to address this concern particularly among males who express a desire to migrate to the US someday.

These findings highlight the importance of examining risky sexual behaviors even before migration to the US occurs. By engaging in high risk sexual behaviors prior to migrating, adolescents are putting themselves and both their sexual partners in Mexico and their future sexual partners in the US at increased risk of contracting STIs and HIV.

The study examined risky sexual behavior of adolescents in Mexico prior to migration. Knowledge about risky sexual behaviors prior to departure is vital for policy makers and researchers as they seek to design and implement interventions aimed at quelling this growing public health concern.