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Prevalence, predictors, and patterns of residential mobility by the parents of preterm infants

Journal of Perinatology (2025)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Objective

Describe how preterm infants experience residential mobility, or moving, before age 2 years.

Study design

This retrospective cohort study included 9267 preterm infants followed in a mid-Atlantic urban and suburban primary care network. Multivariable regression modeling identified patient and community factors associated with residential mobility, defined by a change in Census Block Group.

Results

2494 infants (27%) moved before age 2 years; 559 (6%) moved more than once. Extreme prematurity, compared to late prematurity, was associated with increased odds of mobility (aOR 1.26, 95% CI 1.03–1.54). Governmental insurance, male sex, a positive or missing post-partum depression screen, and neighborhood deprivation were also positively associated with mobility. Among movers, 741 (30%) first relocated before 6 months of age, and mobility rates decreased with increasing chronologic age.

Conclusion

Early-life residential mobility is common among preterm infants, particularly extremely preterm infants. These findings have implications for discharge preparation among this vulnerable group.

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Data availability

The data utilized in this study are held securely with the Arcus Data Repository at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Conditions of the data sharing agreements between the authors and Arcus and the sensitive nature of the data prohibit public posting of the full datasets. Requests for future research are available for CHOP-credentialed researchers via the Arcus Archives. Code for the full dataset creation and analysis is available from the authors upon request. • Arcus Data Repository Team. Arcus Data Repository. Extracted: June 10, 2024. Version v1 15.7. Arcus at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. • Sankey Diagram created using SankeyArt, accessed June 1, 2025 at https://www.sankeyart.com/.

Code availability

Code for the dataset creation and analysis is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This research received support from Arcus at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which provided access to the data and resources. Murosko was supported by an NIH Award, T32HL098054. A GIS Pilot Award sponsored by Arcus at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia supported this project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Daria Murosko, Timothy Nelin, Kristan Scott, Emily F. Gregory & Scott Lorch

  2. Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Daria Murosko, Timothy Nelin, Kristan Scott, Emily F. Gregory & Scott Lorch

  3. PolicyLab, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Daria Murosko, Timothy Nelin, Kristan Scott & Emily F. Gregory

  4. Data Science and Biostatistics Unit, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Priya Sharma & Vicky Tam

  5. Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Elynna Volkova

Authors
  1. Daria Murosko
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  2. Timothy Nelin
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  8. Scott Lorch
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Contributions

D Murosko: Conceptualization; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Visualization; Roles/Writing—original draft; and Writing—review & editing. T Nelin: Conceptualization; Investigation; Methodology; Validation; Writing—review & editing P. Sharma, V Tam and E Volkova: Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Writing—review & editing. K Scott: Conceptualization; Methodology; Writing—review & editing. EF Gregory and S Lorch: Conceptualization; Methodology; Resources; Supervision; Validation; Writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Daria Murosko.

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Murosko, D., Nelin, T., Sharma, P. et al. Prevalence, predictors, and patterns of residential mobility by the parents of preterm infants. J Perinatol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41372-025-02414-x

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