credits: iStockphoto

In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued 10 recommendations for improving preconception health and health care, confirming the well known fact that healthy babies start with healthy mothers.

According to the authors of the report, “Improving preconception health and pregnancy outcomes will require more than effective clinical care for women. Changes in the knowledge and attitudes and behaviors related to reproductive health among both men and women need to be made to improve preconception health. Despite several campaigns aimed at reducing smoking, misuse of alcohol, intimate partner violence, obesity, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), reduction of vaccine-preventable diseases, and exposure to occupational hazards, the majority of U.S. adults are not aware of how these and other health and lifestyle factors influence reproductive health and childbearing.”

More recently, the CDC released a report on the prevalence of 18 behaviors and conditions relevant to preconception health and health care. The report summarizes data collected in 2004 by the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) survey. All of the women who participated in the survey gave birth to a live infant within the previous 2 to 9 months.

Twenty-three percent of the women reported prepregnancy tobacco use, 50 percent reported prepregnancy alcohol use, and only 35 percent reported prepregnancy multivitamin use. Less than 30 percent reported having prepregnancy health counseling. And as many as 1 in 10 women had a poor birth outcome.

The take home message: Be Good to Your Baby Before Its Conceived.