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...

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: To determine the effectiveness of pregnant women empowerment program on elements of empowerment and their satisfaction of prenatal cares. Materials and Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted at a prenatal clinic. The total number of samples were 70; that pregnant women were randomly assigned to either control (n=35) or experimental group (n=35). Women in the experiment...

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...

BACKGROUND In China, the New Co-operative Medical System (NCMS), a rural health insurance system, has expanded nationwide since 2003. This study aims to describe prenatal care use, content and costs of care in one county where prenatal care is included in the NCMS and two counties where it is not. It also explores the perceptions of stakeholders of the prenatal care benefit package in order to ...

BACKGROUND The effectiveness of prenatal care for improving birth and subsequent child outcomes in low-income countries remains controversial, with much of the evidence to date coming from high-income countries and focused on early-life outcomes. We examined associations between prenatal care visits and birth weight, height-for-age at 24 months and attained schooling in four low- and middle-inc...

This research attempts to close an important gap in health economics regarding the efficacy of prenatal care and policies designed to improve access to that care, such as Medicaid. We argue that a key beneficiary-- the mother-- has been left completely out of the analysis. If prenatal care significantly improves the health of the mother, then concluding that prenatal care is 'ineffective' or th...

The persistence of negative perinatal outcomes in Rio de Janeiro suggests problems in the quality of prenatal care. The most recent study in the city showed that only 38% of prenatal care was adequate. This study aimed to evaluate the adequacy of prenatal care under the Brazilian Unified National Health System in the city of Rio de Janeiro. A cross-sectional study in 2007-2008 interviewed 2,422...