The relationship between prenatal health behavior advice and low birth weight.
OBJECTIVE
The purposes of the study were (a) to examine the relationship between the health behavior advice recommended by the Public Health Service Expert Panel on the Content of Prenatal Care and the risk of low birth weight and (b) to describe the type and frequency of health behavior advice offered to a group of pregnant women.


METHODS
The authors used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development/Missouri Maternal and Infant Health Survey, a follow-back survey of women who had delivered very low birth weight infants and of matched control subjects who had delivered moderately low birth weight and normal birth weight infants. Frequency distributions for different types of prenatal health behavior advice were examined for the 2205 participants, and logistic regression analyses were used to determine whether there was a relationship between birth weight and receiving the advice recommended by the Expert Panel.


RESULTS
Only 10.4% of mothers reported receiving all seven types of health behavior advice recommended by the Expert Panel. Women who did not receive all seven types of advice were 1.5 times more likely to deliver a very low birth weight infant than a normal birth weight infant.


CONCLUSIONS
Further research is needed to better understand the relationship between health education and birth weight.
Sable
M R
MR
School of Social Work, University of Missouri-Columbia 65211, USA. swsable@showme.missouri.edu
Herman
A A
AA
D000328:Adult; D001724:Birth Weight; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D019102:Infant, Very Low Birth Weight; D016015:Logistic Models; D011247:Pregnancy; D011256:Pregnancy Outcome; D011295:Prenatal Care / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards