Through our comprehensive prenatal education curriculum, we provide critical information regarding breastfeeding, perinatal HIV prevention, oral health, SIDS prevention, maternal mental health, accessing and locating birth support professionals, family planning, and extant public services including the Text4Baby application, Newborn Screening Program (DPH), Babies Can’t Wait, and the Georgia Family Healthline. Importantly, our instructors must have demonstrated cultural competency in serving women of color and young mothers.
In collaboration with partners, we make these classes available to expectant women who are potentially high-risk, members of vulnerable populations, or face other barriers in accessing critical care and resources during pregnancy. Our comprehensive curriculum covers priority information on evidence-based maternal and infant health improvement measures to address gaps in information received during the prenatal period.
Our curriculum is based on a variety of evidenced-based practices from DPH, CDC, NIH and professional provider organizations, such as ACOG. We are continuously seeking feedback from partners in review of our prenatal educational programs to assure we are implementing the most current best practices. We prioritize adaptation of evidence-based programs that have demonstrated effectiveness in low-income communities and in working with diverse groups to encourage positive behaviors around perinatal health.
Questions? Email mica.whitfield@hmhbga.org.
Participants in our prenatal education workshops consistently demonstrate knowledge gains in key areas for addressing the current disparities in maternal and infant health in Georgia, including:
- Post-birth Warning Signs to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity
- Oral Health & Pregnancy
- HIV/STI Transmission
- Safe Sleep to prevent infant mortality
- Birth Spacing
- When to begin family planning
Our 2019 program participant demographics were as follows:
- Age: 18-45, median age (26), average age (27)
- Primary language: Spanish (45%); English (55%)
- Ethnicity/Race: Black (47%), Hispanic (37%), White (6%), Asian (2%), Did not report (8%)
- Insurance Status: Medicaid enrollees (51%), Uninsured (35%), Private insurance (9%), Unknown status (5%)
- Using insurance status as a proxy, we estimate that at least 86% of our educational program participants are low-income families.
Importantly, we conduct surveys with program participants at the 2-week, 3-month and 6-month marks from the date of their class. This allows us to evaluate proximal and distal outcomes regarding the impact of our work. Key outcomes for our 2019 participants included:
- 100% strongly agreed or agreed that they learned something new from the workshop
- 83% had a flu shot during pregnancy
- 75% initiated breastfeeding
- 100% of participants’ infants attended newborn appointments
- 100% of participants’ infants slept in their own crib
In 2019, HMHBGA released our report, An Evaluation of Current Prenatal Education Availability and Receptivity to Online Education in the State of Georgia. The report included an extensive review of prenatal education curriculums and referral practices across the State and found that found that 94% of the 202 obstetric providers surveyed said they would be likely or very likely to refer patients to on online, mobile-friendly prenatal education platform.
The report also highlighted that many priority topics such as pregnancy Medicaid, postpartum insurance, Georgia’s Planning for Healthy Babies Medicaid Waiver Program, WIC, HIV/STI transmission, and oral healthcare during pregnancy were largely missing from prenatal education curriculums across Georgia.
Prenatal education has the ability to educate women on vital signs and symptoms, can encourage them to seek medical attention, and can increase their likelihood of following medical advice. This is especially important for Georgia families as our state continues to rank poorly for maternal and infant health outcomes (Georgia ranks 4th highest in low birthweight, 5th in prematurity, 6th in infant mortality, and worst in maternal mortality).
According to the Listening to Mothers III: Pregnancy and Birth (2013) report, 55% of mothers find childbirth education classes to be trustworthy; 20% find them to be completely trustworthy, and 35% find them to be very trustworthy. Thus, childbirth education classes are the second most trusted source of pregnancy and childbirth information, after maternity care providers.
The Prenatal Education working Group meets on an ad-hoc basis to increase quality prenatal education content and access throughout the state of Georgia. They also serve as an advisory committee to HMHBGA’s own initiatives including:
To join, please email amber.mack@hmhbga.org. Want to learn about our other cross-sector working groups? Click here.
