Perinatal Equity Initiative • 2019 – 2024 Results Group Prenatal Care
Background
Group Prenatal Care interventions are shown to improve health provider pre-term birth screening and ongoing risk-appropriate care for Black women that better predicts the risk for, and helps prevent, preterm births.1
Two local health jurisdictions (LHJs) selected Group Prenatal Care as an intervention for their community.
Both LHJs are implementing models adapted from Centering Pregnancy.2,3
In collaboration with their communities, both LHJs implementing Group Prenatal Care outlined the intended benefits listed below (“Is Anyone Better Off?" measures) for women and birthing people participating in the intervention. These benefits might be in addition to what was originally described as outcomes for evidence-based interventions.
- Improved breastfeeding initiation.
- Sustained breastfeeding through the postpartum visit.
- Reduced rates of low birthweight (less than 5 lbs. 8 oz).
- Reduced rates of preterm birth (before 37 completed weeks of gestation).
- Experienced moderate or high respect from their provider during their maternity care (Mothers on Respect Index).
- Experienced moderate or high patient autonomy during their maternity care experiences (Mothers Autonomy in Decision Making Scale).
Successes
Combined enrollment in the programs increased over the years, from 16 participants and 16 sessions provided in fiscal year (FY) 2020-2021 to 166 participants and 235 sessions in FY 2023-2024. Most surveyed participants were satisfied with the sessions they attended (80% or higher across intervention years). The percentage of participants who reported experiencing the intended breastfeeding benefits of the intervention has remained high (85% or higher) since FY 2021-2022. The data for FY 2023-2024 on respect and autonomy showed positive outcomes for most participants.
Perinatal Health Outcomes
Group prenatal care has been shown to improve perinatal health outcomes.4 Among participants in the group prenatal care interventions (data aggregated from two LHJs) survey respondents indicated that they experienced preterm birth rates of 8.6%, 12.1% , and 7.8%; and low birth weight delivery rates of 8.6%, 16.2%, and 11.5% respectively, for the years in which data were available. While some of these results are encouraging, it’s not advisable to directly compare these data to California population-level data. Fluctuations in program data can be due to multiple factors including (but not limited to): the number of responses, the demographic and health profile of respondents, and survey selection bias.
Dashboard
Use the dropdown in the dashboard below to explore Group Prenatal Care performance measures by fiscal year. Please see the footnotes to learn how many LHJs reported data (for at least one measure) for a given FY. Refer to
dashboard instructions to learn more about how to use the dashboard.
Use the Google Chrome browser to access the Excel file as it may not properly download when using Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge.