Prevalence of risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes during pregnancy and the preconception period—United States

Abstract Objectives: To assess the prevalence of risk fac-tors for adverse pregnancy outcome during the preconcep-tion stage and during pregnancy, and to assess differences between women in preconception and pregnancy. Methods: Data from the 2002 and 2004 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveil-lance System, United States, were used to estimate the preva-lence of selected risk factors among women 18–44 in the pre-conception period (women who wanted a baby in the next 12 months, and were not using contraception, not sterile and not already pregnant) with women who reported that they were pregnant at the time of interview. Results: Major health risks were reported by substantial proportions of women in the preconceptional period and were also reported by many pregnant women, although pregnant women tended to report lower levels of risk than preconception women. For example, 54.5 % of preconception women reported one or more of 3 risk factors (frequent drinking, current smoking, and absence of an HIV test), compared with 32.0 % of pregnant women (p <.05). The difference in the prevalence of these three risk factors between preconception and pregnancy was significant for women with health insurance (52.5 % in preconception vs. 29.4 % in pregnancy, p <.05), but not for women without insurance (63.4 % vs. 52.7%, p>.05). Conclusions: Women appear to be responding to messages regarding behaviors that directly affect pregnancy such as smoking, alcohol con