Preconception health in England: a proposal for annual reporting with core metrics

Preconception Partnership

doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(19)30954-7

Preconception health in England: a proposal for annual reporting with core metrics

Preconception Partnership

Women & Children's Health

Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/debate › peer-review

61 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

There is growing interest in preconception health as a crucial period for influencing not only pregnancy outcomes, but also future maternal and child health, and prevention of long-term medical conditions. Successive national and international policy documents emphasise the need to improve preconception health, but resources and action have not followed through with these goals. We argue for a dual intervention strategy at both the public health level (eg, by improving the food environment) and at the individual level (eg, by better identification of those planning a pregnancy who would benefit from support to optimise health before conception) in order to raise awareness of preconception health and to normalise the notion of planning and preparing for pregnancy. Existing strategies that target common risks factors, such as obesity and smoking, should recognise the preconception period as one that offers special opportunity for intervention, based on evidence from life-course epidemiology, developmental (embryo) programming around the time of conception, and maternal motivation. To describe and monitor preconception health in England, we propose an annual report card using metrics from multiple routine data sources. Such a report card should serve to hold governments and other relevant agencies to account for delivering interventions to improve preconception health.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2262-2271
Number of pages	10
Journal	The Lancet
Volume	393
Issue number	10187
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)30954-7
Publication status	Published - 1 Jun 2019

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10.1016/S0140-6736(19)30954-7

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title = "Preconception health in England: a proposal for annual reporting with core metrics",

abstract = "There is growing interest in preconception health as a crucial period for influencing not only pregnancy outcomes, but also future maternal and child health, and prevention of long-term medical conditions. Successive national and international policy documents emphasise the need to improve preconception health, but resources and action have not followed through with these goals. We argue for a dual intervention strategy at both the public health level (eg, by improving the food environment) and at the individual level (eg, by better identification of those planning a pregnancy who would benefit from support to optimise health before conception) in order to raise awareness of preconception health and to normalise the notion of planning and preparing for pregnancy. Existing strategies that target common risks factors, such as obesity and smoking, should recognise the preconception period as one that offers special opportunity for intervention, based on evidence from life-course epidemiology, developmental (embryo) programming around the time of conception, and maternal motivation. To describe and monitor preconception health in England, we propose an annual report card using metrics from multiple routine data sources. Such a report card should serve to hold governments and other relevant agencies to account for delivering interventions to improve preconception health.",

author = "{Preconception Partnership} and Judith Stephenson and Christina Vogel and Jennifer Hall and Jayne Hutchinson and Sue Mann and Helen Duncan and Kathryn Woods-Townsend and {de Lusignan}, Simon and Lucilla Poston and Janet Cade and Keith Godfrey and Mark Hanson and Geraldine Barrett and Mary Barker and Gabriella Conti and Geordan Shannon and Tim Colbourn",

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AU - Preconception Partnership

AU - Stephenson, Judith

AU - Vogel, Christina

AU - Hall, Jennifer

AU - Hutchinson, Jayne

AU - Mann, Sue

AU - Duncan, Helen

AU - Woods-Townsend, Kathryn

AU - de Lusignan, Simon

AU - Poston, Lucilla

AU - Cade, Janet

AU - Godfrey, Keith

AU - Hanson, Mark

AU - Barrett, Geraldine

AU - Barker, Mary

AU - Conti, Gabriella

AU - Shannon, Geordan

AU - Colbourn, Tim

PY - 2019/6/1

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AB - There is growing interest in preconception health as a crucial period for influencing not only pregnancy outcomes, but also future maternal and child health, and prevention of long-term medical conditions. Successive national and international policy documents emphasise the need to improve preconception health, but resources and action have not followed through with these goals. We argue for a dual intervention strategy at both the public health level (eg, by improving the food environment) and at the individual level (eg, by better identification of those planning a pregnancy who would benefit from support to optimise health before conception) in order to raise awareness of preconception health and to normalise the notion of planning and preparing for pregnancy. Existing strategies that target common risks factors, such as obesity and smoking, should recognise the preconception period as one that offers special opportunity for intervention, based on evidence from life-course epidemiology, developmental (embryo) programming around the time of conception, and maternal motivation. To describe and monitor preconception health in England, we propose an annual report card using metrics from multiple routine data sources. Such a report card should serve to hold governments and other relevant agencies to account for delivering interventions to improve preconception health.

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Preconception health in England: a proposal for annual reporting with core metrics

Abstract

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