Prenatal care: Access for all?

Prenatal care is an essential part of a woman’s pregnancy journey. It ensures that both mother and child are doing well, and helps to locate and diagnose any issues before they become complications. Without regular check ups, mothers will not be aware of life-threatening complications such as preeclampsia or placenta previa. Women in low socioeconomic brackets often do not have good access to prenatal care. Research studies have interviewed women and have stated many times there are no providers in the area where they live and they have to make long trips to see a doctor, which they cannot afford. As a result they will go without prenatal care entirely and do not realize how important that step of pregnancy is. The question then becomes, if education on the importance of prenatal care was made readily available and accessible to all communnities, would the amount of prenatal care visits increase, and would compilations among that population go down? To answer this question would require interventions to help these women. This project pushes to raise awareness for the importance of prenatal visits to these women by methods such as developing a prenatal health campaign to emphasize its importance, and petition for grants and government assistance for these women. Community clinics should be made available for these women to receive prenatal care that is local to their residences such as churches, community centers, and local health departments. After these interventions have been put into place, interviews with these women can be conducted to identify if their prenatal visits have increased and if they feel as though they have more opportunities for prenatal care