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Sunday, September 26, 2010
Title: Using Community Collaborative Methods to Reduce Preterm Birth Risk Among Urban, Economically Disadvantaged Childbearing Women
Discipline: Women’s Health (WH), Childbearing (CB), Advanced Practice (AP)
Learning Objectives:
Submission Description:- Describe a community collaborative method to improve health promotion.
- Describe the use of a needs assessment framework to guide focus group research.
- Discuss findings related to risk reduction behaviors and health promotion in child bearing women.
Preterm birth (PTB), whose leading cause is preterm labor, is associated with increased neonatal morbidity and mortality. Despite health care advances in the United States, the rate of PTB has increased from 9.4% in the 1980s to 13.6% in 2006. Between 1996 and 2006, the rate of PTB in Pennsylvania increased more than 12%. For urban economically disadvantaged women residing in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, our study site, the rate for PTB is 15.6%.
We used a community collaborative method to create the foundation for planning a comprehensive PTB prevention strategy. Our goal was to provide health promotion (HP) education leading to individual behavior modifications as well as community changes that would foster preterm labor risk reduction. Collaborating with the hospital nurses, the School of Nursing and childbearing women from West Philadelphia, our mutual study aims identified: 1) perinatal prevention and acute care health priorities, 2) knowledge and attitudes about preterm labor, and 3) ways an urban childbearing community could develop programs for childbearing women to optimize their knowledge of preterm labor and foster access to needed resources. A needs assessment framework guided the use of focus group methodology, a qualitative research approach well-suited to eliciting participants’ knowledge, cultural beliefs, and experiences regarding the perinatal topics.
Six focus groups (N=45) were conducted (postpartum unit and women’s shelters). The women’s mean age was 28.7 years; 93.3% had children; and 73% were African American. Themes identified focused on HP related to sexual transmitted diseases, female cancers, preterm labor and nutrition. Themes for community locations, names and media advertisement for HP sessions were identified. Potential barriers to attendance at session included child care and transportation. These findings have been used to address barriers to care and create community HP sessions that promise to provide relevant information and skills needed for HP risk reduction behaviors for these women.
We used a community collaborative method to create the foundation for planning a comprehensive PTB prevention strategy. Our goal was to provide health promotion (HP) education leading to individual behavior modifications as well as community changes that would foster preterm labor risk reduction. Collaborating with the hospital nurses, the School of Nursing and childbearing women from West Philadelphia, our mutual study aims identified: 1) perinatal prevention and acute care health priorities, 2) knowledge and attitudes about preterm labor, and 3) ways an urban childbearing community could develop programs for childbearing women to optimize their knowledge of preterm labor and foster access to needed resources. A needs assessment framework guided the use of focus group methodology, a qualitative research approach well-suited to eliciting participants’ knowledge, cultural beliefs, and experiences regarding the perinatal topics.
Six focus groups (N=45) were conducted (postpartum unit and women’s shelters). The women’s mean age was 28.7 years; 93.3% had children; and 73% were African American. Themes identified focused on HP related to sexual transmitted diseases, female cancers, preterm labor and nutrition. Themes for community locations, names and media advertisement for HP sessions were identified. Potential barriers to attendance at session included child care and transportation. These findings have been used to address barriers to care and create community HP sessions that promise to provide relevant information and skills needed for HP risk reduction behaviors for these women.
