Panel:
New Evidence for the Fetal Origins Hypotheses
(Health Policy)
Thursday, November 12, 2015: 1:45 PM-3:15 PM
Tuttle Prefunction (Hyatt Regency Miami)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Panel Organizers: David Slusky, University of Kansas
Panel Chairs: Elaine Hill, University of Rochester
Discussants: Laura Wherry, University of California, Los Angeles and Emilia Simeonova, Johns Hopkins University
This panel presents four new papers that support the fetal origins hypothesis. The authors examine changes in utero exposure to to sunlight, fossil fuel extraction, medical practice, cigarettes, and increase government spending on infrastructure improvements and business tax credits. They find statistically significant impacts of these environmental factors on broad measure such as birth weight and premature birth as well as narrow ones such as asthma prevalence and exacerbation. All of the findings are new robust evidence for David Barker's famous hypothesis that fetal conditions have an enormous effect on infant and child health.
