Читать книгу Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence - Laura E. Levine - Страница 225

The things that help protect the health and well-being of a woman at any point in her life also help ensure a healthy pregnancy, but even before she gets pregnant, preconception care can reduce or prevent many threats to the health of a woman or her baby (Mehta-Lee, Bernstein, Harrison, & Merkatz, 2013). She should stop smoking, drinking, or using illicit or recreational drugs, eat a healthy diet, and get the right amount of physical activity and sleep. In consultation with her physician, she also should evaluate the safety of any over-the-counter or prescription medications that she uses and discuss possible health risk factors in her workplace or home environment.

Prenatal care. Regular visits to a doctor throughout a woman’s pregnancy are essential to good prenatal care. What do you think we could do in the United States to help ensure that more pregnant women get this type of care?

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Although seeing a physician on a regular basis, beginning early in a pregnancy, is one of the best ways to avoid problems later, each year nearly one million American women give birth without having received adequate medical care during their pregnancy (Health Resources and Services Administration, n.d.). For instance, Black, Hispanic, and Native American women are more than twice as likely as White women to receive late or no prenatal care, and women who do not receive prenatal care are 3 times more likely to give birth to a low-weight baby and 5 times more likely to have an infant who dies (Child Trends, 2015b). Adolescents, women with less education, and those who are poor are also at higher risk for receiving late or no prenatal care (Gennaro, Melnyk, O’Connor, Gibeau, & Nadel, 2016; Ramirez, Thompson, & Vela, 2013). However, these risk factors often co-occur, placing some women at an even greater risk of having inadequate prenatal care. For instance, women who have less education are also more likely to be poor. Improving the quality of prenatal care available in poorer neighborhoods, expanding educational efforts among pregnant women to make them aware of the importance of prenatal care, and increasing access to funding for preventative care are just some of the things that can help improve this situation.