Comparing CenteringPregnancy® to standard prenatal care plus prenatal education
Abstract
There is significant evidence to support the importance of prenatal care in preventing adverse outcomes such as preterm birth and low infant birth weight. In previous studies, the group prenatal care model CenteringPregnancy® had been shown to reduce adverse birth outcomes, but to date, no comparison had been made with a model that included prenatal education. These results suggest that CenteringPregnancy® can recruit and retain a vulnerable group of women with a constellation of risk factors for poor pregnancy and birth outcomes, including poverty, language barriers and poor mental health. Post program, the rates of stress, anxiety and depression were similar to other women with more social and financial advantage. These findings suggest that CenteringPregnancy® may be a community based care strategy that contributes to improved mental health, knowledge, and behaviours to optimize outcomes for mothers and children.
Notes
Gaps identified
NA
Key findings
Women in the CenteringPregnancy® group were more likely to have completed a lower level of education, have a lower household income, be of non-Caucasian ethnicity, be born outside of Canada, and to primarily speak a language other than English in the home. Women in the CenteringPregnancy® group were also more likely to have had their first prenatal appointment at a walk-in clinic rather than with a family physician in an appointment based office, a physician at a low risk maternity clinic, an obstetrician, or a midwife.
Women in the CenteringPregnancy® group having lower levels of social support and higher levels of depressive symptoms, stress, and anxiety. But at 4 months after giving birth, women in CenteringPregnancy® were significantly more likely than women in the prenatal education group to report improvements in symptoms for depression, stress, and anxiety, but not for social support.
Key recommendations
Further research is needed
Community organizations
Maternity Care Clinic and prenatal educators from the provincial health region
Key populations
Pregnant women
Location
Calgary, Alberta
Integration timeline
At what point during the integration process the study was conducted?
NA
Open-access – Yes
https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2393-13-S1-S5