Journal article
Pre-pregnancy care in general practice in England: cross-sectional observational study using administrative routine health data
- Abstract:
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Background
Optimising women's pre-pregnancy health is a policy priority for benefits spanning pregnancy and throughout the mother and baby's life. In the UK pre-pregnancy care (PPC) tends to be delivered in primary care, with the onus on women to seek services. We aimed to describe women’s engagement with General Practice (GP) in the year preceding pregnancy, including specific PPC; to explore whether women with recognised risk factors for poor pregnancy outcomes receive targeted care.
Methods
Data for women aged 18-48yrs and registered for 12 months with a GP on 01/01/2017, were drawn from English Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) GOLD, a source of electronic health record data. Demographic characteristics, lifestyle factors and health conditions were described. CPRD Pregnancy Register and linked hospital data were used to identify pregnancies in 2017/18 and to describe PPC in the year preceding pregnancy.
Results
Of 193,578 women included, 14,326 had a confirmed pregnancy. 7.6% of the pregnant women had records indicating specific PPC in the preceding year, whilst 41.0% had records of health promotion (advice on nutrition, smoking, weight, alcohol and contraception). More women with pre-existing medical conditions received health promotion (46.0%-83.9% for various risk groups), although the levels of PPC remained low (4.7%-14.9%).
Conclusions
PPC was rarely recorded, likely reflecting low levels of consultation for, or discussion of, pregnancy planning. This represents a missed opportunity for maximising women’s health, particularly in those with recognised risk factors for poor pregnancy, perinatal and longer-term outcomes.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 910.7KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1186/s12889-025-21728-1
Authors
+ National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/015ah0c92
- Grant:
- PR-PRU-1217–21202
- 970014
- Funding agency for:
- Kenyon, S
- Publisher:
- BioMed Central
- Journal:
- BMC Public Health More from this journal
- Volume:
- 25
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 1101
- Publication date:
- 2025-03-22
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-01-31
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-2458
- ISSN:
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1471-2458
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2092809
- Local pid:
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pubs:2092809
- Deposit date:
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2025-02-28
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Li et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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