The National Summit on Preconception Care: A Summary of Concepts and Recommendations

Abstract

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and 35 partner organizations have engaged in developing an agenda for Preconception Health. A summit was held in June 2005 to discuss the current state of knowledge regarding preconception care and convene a select panel to develop recommendations and action steps for improving the health of women, children, and families through advances in clinical care, public health, and community action. A Select Panel on Preconception Care, convened by CDC, deliberated critical related issues and created refined definition of preconception care. The panel also developed a strategic plan with goals, recommendations, and action steps for improving preconception health. The recommendations and action steps are specific to the implementation of health behavior, access, consumer demand, research, and surveillance activities for monitoring and improving the health of women, children and families. The outcome of the deliberations is the CDC publication of detailed recommendations and action steps in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report series, Recommendations and Reports.

Reproductive Health Policy in China: A Study of Preconception Care in Rural China

“…Because the construction of preconception care in Chinese policies centers around marriage, the inclusion of men in preconception care can be traced back to the 1970s, as compared to the relatively new inclusion of men in the U.S. setting (3). Further, this study also found that the preconception health and care policy language of the Chinese government, both at national and provincial levels, has mainly a biomedicine focus, similar to the dominant preconception health and care policy languages in international settings (6). However, the Chinese preconception care policies also contain a nonbiomedical message that is constructed around menstrual care.…”

Pregnancy as Foreground in Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Testing Decisions in Primary Care

“…The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and 35 partner organizations convened a national summit on preconception care in 2005, and released policy recommendations in 2006 (Posner et al, 2006). Identification of carrier status for genetic conditions (including CF) that could be assessed prior to pregnancy is advocated in the recently released policies (Atrash et al, 2006;Posner et al, 2006;Shapira and Dolan, 2006). In addition, updated 2005 ACOG recommendations for CFCT placed more emphasis on offering CFCT to all couples, rather than focusing primarily on couples planning pregnancy or during pregnancy (Committee on Genetics ACOG, 2005).…”

Determining Pre-Conception Risk Profiles Using a National Online Self-Reported Risk Assessment: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Once they are detected, most of these risk factors can be managed or treated before conception to prevent or limit fetal exposure [8]. Pre-conception care is defined as ‘a set of interventions that aim to identify and modify biomedical, behavioural, and social risks to a woman's health or pregnancy outcome through prevention and management, emphasizing those factors that must be acted on before conception or early in pregnancy to have maximal impact' [9]. …”