Prenatal Care

The Maternal and Infant Health focus page covers health issues of pregnant women, fetuses, and infants up to one year of age.  The most important health issue for pregnant women is receiving prenatal care.  Research also indicates that “infants born to women with no prenatal care are 16 times more likely to die in the first month of life than babies of women who had more than 5 prenatal visits.”¹ Prenatal care provides women with not only appropriate medical care and screening from the onset of the pregnancy, but also with the information women need to make the proper nutritional, exercise, and lifestyle choices needed to support a healthy pregnancy.  The doctor or midwife explains what to expect during the birth process and basic skills of caring for a newborn.  A typical schedule of prenatal visits might be about once each month during the first six months of pregnancy, every two weeks during the seventh and eighth month, and weekly visits in the ninth month of pregnancy.  Women over 35 years of age or those with high risk pregnancies (involving certain health problems such as diabetes or high blood pressure) will probably be seen more often. 

Arizona Ranked 34th

Arizona is ranked 34th for its adequacy of prenatal care compared to other states.²  Because adequate prenatal care is so integral to healthy pregnancies and healthy infants, two Arizona programs aim to provide access for all Arizonans to such care: Baby Arizona and Health Start.  Women without health insurance are more likely not to seek out prenatal care.  Baby Arizona seeks to aid these women by allowing them to begin prenatal care even before determining whether they are eligible for ACCHSS, Arizona’s state-sponsored health care program.  The Health Start program utilizes “lay health workers to provide education, support, and advocacy services to pregnant/postpartum women and their families in targeted communities across the state.”³   Services they offer include health education, developmental screening, nurse visits, increased prenatal care, and immunization assistance. Health issues relevant to infants include newborn screenings, well-baby checks, circumcision, colds and croup, fevers, and normal development.

Perinatal Mortality

In 2005, there were 106,776 reported pregnancies in Arizona, 95,798 of which resulted in a live birth.⁴  The perinatal death rate was 6.1 per every 1000 live births and fetal deaths.  54.8% of perinatal deaths were early infant deaths.⁵  10.7% of Arizona births were preterm births.⁶  6.9% of Arizona babies in 2005 were born with low birth weight.  “ Preterm delivery is the strongest risk factor for LBW.  Infants born at less than 37 completed weeks of gestation are nearly 22 times (47.8% vs. 2.2%) more likely to be LBW than infants born at term.”⁷  Only 77.7% of Arizona women received first trimester prenatal care, giving Arizona a lower ranking than the national average.