In the fight to reduce longstanding maternal health disparities, group prenatal care programs could be an effective tool, say researchers from Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and Yale School of Public Health. Based on their earlier studies, the researchers described many possible benefits of group prenatal care programs in a perspective article that was published June 8 in the New England Journal of Medicine as part of the journal's call for papers discussing health interventions to reduce inequities. Jeannette Ickovics, Ph.
D., Herman Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health, and Jessica Lewis, Ph.D.
, research scientist at Yale School of Medicine, responded to the call by discussing their group prenatal care program "Expect With Me," which they founded in 2014, proclaiming the urgency of the profound and life-threatening racial disparities that persist in perinatal and maternal health . "Maternal morbidity and mortality for Black women are very different [from that of other racial groups], and so when we were developing Expect With Me and studying group models, we were finding that we could actually mitigate those disparities in group prenatal care," says Lewis. The Expect With Me model consists of 10 two-hour group sessions with eight to 12 participants who are due in the same month.
Led by an obstetrician or a midwife, sessions focus on nutrition, physical activity , mental health, and sexual health, in addition to standard prenatal content..
