Prenatal care appears to serve as a trigger in increasing the chances for access to subsequent health care services. Although several previous studies have investigated this connection, none have focused specifically on how parents' behavior differs before and after learning the gender of their babies. Investigating parents' behavioral changes after the child's birth provides a quasi-natural ex...

OBJECTIVE This study aims to evaluate the effect of maternal health insurance status on the utilisation of antenatal, skilled delivery and postnatal care. DESIGN A population-based cross-sectional study. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS We utilised the 2008 Demographic and Health Survey data of Ghana, which included 2987 women who provided information on maternal health insurance status. PRIMARY ...

People are especially vulnerable to environmental pollutants while in the womb, or prenatal period, and throughout childhood. During these times, environmental chemicals are more likely to have impacts on health and normal growth, and can cause serious health effects later in life. For example, research has shown that when pregnant women are exposed to pesticides, their children may have an inc...

INTRODUCTION The objective of this study was to present the Swedish Pregnancy Register and to explore regional differences in maternal characteristics, antenatal care, first trimester combined screening and delivery outcomes in Sweden. MATERIAL AND METHODS The Pregnancy Register (www.graviditetsregistret.se) collects data on pregnancy and childbirth, starting at the first visit to antenatal c...

Background Knowledge of the aggregate effects of multiple socioeconomic vulnerabilities is important for shedding light on the determinants of growing health inequalities and inequities in maternal healthcare. Objective This paper describes patterns of inequity in maternal healthcare utilization and analyzes associations between inequity and multiple socioeconomic vulnerabilities among women in...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether a complex community intervention in rural Zambia improved understanding of maternal health and increased use of maternal health-care services. METHODS The intervention took place in six rural districts selected by the Zambian Ministry of Health. It involved community discussions on safe pregnancy and delivery led by trained volunteers and the provision of emerge...

BACKGROUND To propose health system strategies to meeting the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations on HIV screening through antenatal care (ANC) services, we assessed predictors of HIV screening, and simulated the impact of changes in these predictors on the probability of HIV screening in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico (State of Chiapas), Nicaragua, Panama, and El Salvador. METHODS W...

This cross-sectional study examined potential demand-side barriers to women's use of basic health services in rural southern Egypt (Upper Egypt). Face-to-face interviews with a structured questionnaire were carried out on 205 currently-married women, inquiring about their use of health facilities: regular antenatal care (ANC) during the last pregnancy and medical treatment services when they su...

To assess the impact of Medicaid expansion for pregnant women in South Carolina and California, the authors compared change in rates of timely prenatal care, adverse infant and maternal health outcomes, and use of cesarean section for groups of pregnant women who were either uninsured or covered by Medicaid, versus women with private coverage. The results showed small and/or inconsistent change...

INTRODUCTION Giving birth in a health facility is associated with lower maternal mortality than giving birth at home. A recent Tanzania Demographic Health survey showed that, although more than 90% of pregnant women attended at least one antenatal clinic visit, only 50% of pregnant women delivered at a health facility. The aim of this study was to document the magnitude and predictors of instit...