OBJECTIVE To identify factors associated with inadequacy of prenatal care utilization in urban community. METHODS A cross-sectional study of a systematic sample stratified by maternity hospital, consisting of hospital births in the municipality of São Luís, Brazil, was carried out from March 1997 to February 1998. Socioeconomic and demographic factors, reproductive health, morbidity during pr...

OBJECTIVES to identify midwives' perceptions about adolescents' failure to utilise prenatal services or to initiate such utilisation late during their pregnancies. DESIGN a quantitative descriptive and exploratory design, using questionnaires to collect data, to describe midwives' perceptions about factors influencing pregnant adolescents' non-utilisation or late utilisation of prenatal servi...

Article type: Review article Background & aim: Prenatal care is a key strategy for achieving public health goals, primary healthcare objectives, and the Millennium Development Goals. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors influencing the use of prenatal care services in order to design suitable interventions and promote the use of these services. Methods: In this systematic quanti...

BACKGROUND It has been suggested that reduced antenatal care packages or prenatal care managed by providers other than obstetricians for low risk women can be as effective as standard models of antenatal care. OBJECTIVES The objective of this review was to assess the effects of antenatal care programmes for low-risk women. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Gr...

In Bangladesh, like many other developing countries among the major underlying factors leading to poor maternal situation include very low percentages of women actually seek professional medical assistance for pregnancy related care, deliveries and complications. This paper employs statistical methods to identify the factors associated with modes of delivery assistance in Bangladesh. To reach o...

BACKGROUND Pregnant women in American Samoa have a high risk of complications due to overweight and obesity. Prenatal care can mitigate the risk, however many women do not seek adequate care during pregnancy. Low utilization of prenatal care may stem from low levels of satisfaction with services offered. Our objective was to identify predictors of prenatal care satisfaction in American Samoa. ...

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 & aim: Care provision is one of the most important factors in preventing and reducing mortality among pregnant mothers. Despite availability, the uptake of health services in health centers is undesirable. This study aimed to investigate the factors influencing the behavior of pregnant women towards using prenatal care services based on health belief model in healthcare centers of Tu...

CONTEXT Given the health risks of HIV/AIDS and the risks of teenage pregnancy in general, pregnant HIV-positive adolescents in Kenya need maternal health care services that account for their HIV status. However, research on their access to and use of these services is scant. METHODS To examine maternal health care utilization, pregnancy history data collected in 2009 on 506 pregnancies among ...