Prenatal Care Essay

There are more than four million births per year in the United States, and almost one third of them have some type of pregnancy complications associated with late or no prenatal care. About three women die every day from pregnancy complications (HRSA, n.d.). As mentioned throughout the paper, pregnant women, who do not obtain adequacy prenatal care, have more chances that complications may not be detected and managed in a timely basis. No obtaining appropriate prenatal care increases the possibilities of adverse outcomes for the mother and baby.

The Title V Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Program (Title V of the Social Security Act) was created with the purpose of improving the health and well-being of women, predominantly mothers and

The following are different approaches utilizing to increase early prenatal care: increase access to timely prenatal care, improve the content of prenatal care, enhance the organization and delivery of prenatal care, the use of Health Information Technology as awareness technique to communicate the importance of preconception and early prenatal care, support collaborative quality improvement, facilitate performance measurement, enhance health promotion, assist with care coordination, reduce clinical errors, improve delivery of preventive health services, provide decision support, and encourage completeness of documentation, and support data integration (Lu, Kotelchuck, Hogan, Johnson, and Reyes,

The Life Course Perspective suggests that perinatal outcomes are determined by the entire life course of the woman prior to pregnancy, not just the nine months of pregnancy. Preconception and inter-conception care are designed to assure that women are healthy before becoming pregnant, that pregnancies are planned or intentional, and that they are spaced at intervals that promote healthy birth outcomes for babies and good health for mothers (Oregon Health Authority,