OBJECTIVES There is evidence that health care during pregnancy is a crucial component in ensuring a safe delivery. Because the infant mortality rate in Costa Rica is almost half the rate of Panama, the researchers tested the hypothesis that women in Costa Rica are more knowledgeable about prenatal health care than women in neighboring Panama. METHODS A multiple-choice survey was used to evalu...

OBJECTIVES To identify psychosocial factors that Black women think should be addressed in prenatal care assessment and develop a Prenatal Event History Calendar to assess these factors. DESIGN A qualitative descriptive study. SETTING Two inner city hospital prenatal care clinics in Southeastern Michigan. PARTICIPANTS Twenty-two Black women who had attended at least 2 prenatal care visits....

BACKGROUND Over the last decades there has been a reduction of social inequalities in Brazil, as well as a strong expansion of health services, including prenatal care. The objective of the present study was to estimate the rate of inadequate prenatal care utilization and its associated factors in São Luís, Brazil, in 2010 and to determine whether there was a reduction of inequity in prenatal c...

Methods An analytical case-control study. Data collection took place in different primary health care centres, in the Sexual and Reproductive Health Program (Badalona and Sabadell Units) of the Catalan Health Institute. Pregnant women attending the midwife clinics for prenatal care during the first trimester. The case group included pregnant women who presented positive culture for GBS at 35-37...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore the perceptions of women living in inner-city Winnipeg, Canada, about barriers, facilitators, and motivators related to their use of prenatal care. METHODS Individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted in person with 26 pregnant or postpartum women living in inner-city neighborhoods with high rates of inadequ...

This study aims to describe prenatal care provided to pregnant users of the public or private health services in Brazil, using survey data from Birth in Brazil, research conducted from 2011 to 2012. Data was obtained through interviews with postpartum women during hospitalization and information from hand-held prenatal notes. The results show high coverage of prenatal care (98.7%), with 75.8% o...

Background: Gestational diabetes (GA) is a common complication, associated with adverse prenatal outcomes and perceived stress. The effects of education on perceived stress have been widely investigated, whereas the role of self-care in GA has been less noted. Aim: to determine the effects of self-care education on perceived stress in women with GA under insulin treatment. Methods: In this rand...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the dose-response relationship and synergetic effect of the maternal educational level and two measures of prenatal care on neonatal low birth weight (LBW) risk. METHODS Data were derived from the Perinatal Health Care Surveillance System (PHCSS) from January 2001 to September 2009 in Kunshan City, Jiangsu province, eastern China, which included data on 31412 women w...

OBJECTIVE To compare the number of prenatal care visits for women with and without schizophrenia and to explore the relationship between the level of prenatal care and adverse pregnancy outcomes (low birth weight [LBW], preterm gestation, and small-for-gestational-age [SGA] babies). METHOD We identified a total of 607 women who gave birth from 2001 to 2003, who had been diagnosed with schizop...