Setting Research Priorities for Preconception Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Aiming to Reduce Maternal and Child Mortality and Morbidity

Abstract

Sohni Dean and colleagues report their CHNRI exercise that developed health research priorities for effective pre-conception care in low- and middle-income countries. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Preconception Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: New Opportunities and a New Metric

“…Thanks to Sohni Dean and colleagues and reported in this week's PLOS Medicine , preconception care has found a place in the continuum of care aimed at improving maternal, newborn, and child health in LMICs [5]. They have created and ranked an extensive list of maternal and obstetrical delivery risk factors, clarified which of those appear amenable to preconception care interventions, and packaged them according to expert-defined criteria like “answerability” and “effectiveness.” The work that went into this is extensive, and we recommend reading their paper more than once.…”

Patterns and Determinants of Preconception Health Behaviors in Iranian Women

“…Preconception health behaviors (PCHBs) include couples' planning for pregnancy and changing lifestyle to have a greater chance of fertility and desirable pregnancy outcomes (3). PCHBs include planning for the reproductive period, stopping addictive/illegal drug use (including alcohol and tobacco), engaging in physical activities, maintaining a healthy diet, consulting with the physician about the consumption of prescribed medications, using multivitamins and folic acid supplements, updating vaccinations, controlling diseases like diabetes mellitus, avoiding contact with harmful environmental toxins, and investigating the family history of diseases (4).…”

“…Women who have unplanned pregnancy often start delayed prenatal care at the end of the first trimester, while many of the biological, psychological, social and environmental risk factors have previously imposed their negative effects on the fetus in the organogenesis stage at day 17 -56 pregnancy, when the woman may not be even aware of her pregnancy (12,13). Indeed, after becoming aware of their pregnancy, mothers try to reduce risk factors by engaging in healthy behaviors; however, by this time, it is too late to improve pregnancy outcomes (3).…”

Setting an implementation research agenda for Canadian investments in global maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health: a research prioritization exercise

“…Figure 1 shows how the steering committee identified relevant research questions from existing Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative studies. [11][12][13][14][15][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] The final list from the literature contained 45 research questions. Thirtyeight experts were then formally invited by email to participate.…”