Home visits may cut risk of low birthweight

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A program that offers home visits to low- income pregnant women may lower their risk of delivering an underweight baby, according to a study published Tuesday.

Researchers found that women who received home-visitation services from the program, called Healthy Families New York, were about half as likely to deliver a low-birthweight baby as a comparison group that did not have home visits.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggest that home visits could be one way to curb the problem of low birthweight, which raises the risk of newborn health problems.

HFNY is based on a national program, Healthy Families America, that offers home visits to low-income pregnant women at risk for complications during pregnancy and birth.

Home visitors are trained laypeople from the same community and ethnic background as their clients. They help pregnant women get access to a doctor and social services when necessary. They also talk to them about nutrition and healthy behaviors during pregnancy, cutting out risky behaviors, reducing stress and getting psychologically prepared for motherhood.

For the current study, researchers followed 501 women who were randomly assigned to one of two groups — one that received HFNY home visits, and one that received information on other services, but not home visitation.

Overall, the study found, 5 percent of women in the home-visitation group delivered a low-birthweight baby, versus 10 percent of those in the comparison group.

The program appeared to help black and Hispanic women in particular, with no clear difference found between white women who did or did not receive home visits.

“It appears that home visitors from the Healthy Families New York helped these mothers to achieve a healthy pregnancy experience on multiple fronts,” researcher Dr. Eunju Lee, of the State University of New York at Albany, told Reuters Health.

The study found that home visitors helped connect some women with a primary care provider, Lee noted. She said she and her colleagues also suspect that other benefits — like reduced stress and help with obtaining social services like the federal nutrition program WIC — helped prevent some cases of low birthweight.

SOURCE: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, February 2009.

Source

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Posts:


NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Home-based rehabilitation is no worse than hospital-based programs for helping patients get better after a heart attack or surgery to clear blocked heart arteries, and may be more accessible for patients, research from the UK shows. “Although this study was not designed to show equivalence, the provision of a home-based service

Full Post: Home as good as hospital for cardiac rehab
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

depression in check By Karla Gale NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In-home counseling by health visitors trained to identify depression in new mothers reduces the prevalence of postnatal depression at 12 months, according to a trial in the UK, while a Canadian study indicates that telephone-based peer support is also effective in preventing postnatal depression among women

Full Post: In-home counseling and peer support keep postnatal
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women and girls who’ve had an unplanned pregnancy in the past are at risk of future unplanned pregnancies, regardless of other risk factors like age and education, a new study shows. Researchers found that of 542 women and teenage girls enrolled in a study to encourage contraceptive use, those with a

Full Post: Unintended pregnancy raises risk of future ones
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Some women have the misfortune to suffer numerous miscarriages and are known to have risky pregnancies, but women who suffer even one miscarriage seem to be more likely to have complications in their next pregnancy, Scottish researchers report. “Our work, based on the analysis of pregnancy records of more than 32,000

Full Post: Miscarriage may spell trouble in next pregnancy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many women may not be fully aware of the potential consequences of waiting until later in life to have a baby, a UK study suggests. The study, of 724 women who were either pregnant or having trouble getting pregnant, found that nearly all were aware that age affects the chances of

Full Post: Some women unaware of risks of delaying motherhood

Site Navigation

Most Read

Search

Contact

  • kinwrite.com@gmail.com