Policy and Financing Issues for Preconception and Interconception HealthImproving Women's Preconceptional Health: Findings from a Randomized Trial of the Strong Healthy Women Intervention in the Central Pennsylvania Women's Health Study
Section snippets
The Central Pennsylvania Women's Health Study
The Strong Healthy Women intervention was developed as part of the Central Pennsylvania Women's Health Study (CePAWHS), funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Health (Miller et al., 2007, Weisman et al., 2006). CePAWHS consisted of 2 phases. In the first phase, population-based survey data were collected for women of reproductive age to ascertain the prevalence of multiple risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes in a 28-county region of Central Pennsylvania. This region was chosen
Overall study design
A randomized controlled trial of the Strong Healthy Women intervention was conducted in 15 low-income rural communities within the 28-county Central Pennsylvania region. Low-income rural communities were targeted because women in these communities were shown to have high rates of risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes in the Phase I CePAWHS population-based surveys.
The randomized trial study design is shown in Figure 1. The study was approved by the Penn State College of Medicine
Results
For descriptive purposes, the sociodemographic characteristics of the analytic sample are shown in Table 1. The sample is quite diverse with respect to all sociodemographic variables except for race/ethnicity (reflecting the demographics of the population in the targeted low-income rural communities) and with respect to health care access (i.e., having a regular source of health care and health insurance status). No statistically significant differences in the sociodemographic characteristics
Discussion
This is the first report of findings from the CePAWHS randomized, controlled trial assessing the effectiveness of a behavior change intervention designed to improve the health of preconceptional and interconceptional women. The Strong Healthy Women intervention is a unique group format program targeting multiple health-related behaviors that are related to pregnancy outcomes. This initial randomized trial with pre- and interconceptional women recruited in low-income rural communities
Acknowledgments
This work would not have been possible without the substantial contributions of our late colleague, Gary A. Chase, PhD, who designed the randomized trial and conducted the main analyses. He is greatly missed.
Marianne M. Hillemeier, PhD, is a sociologist/demographer with research interests in maternal and child health disparities.
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Marianne M. Hillemeier, PhD, is a sociologist/demographer with research interests in maternal and child health disparities.
Danielle Symons Downs, PhD, is an exercise psychology researcher whose interests include understanding the psychosocial and behavioral correlates of exercise in women and children.
Mark E. Feinberg, PhD, is a psychologist whose research focuses on family and community preventive programs.
Carol S. Weisman, PhD, is a sociologist and health services researcher with a principal interest in women's health care
Cynthia H. Chuang, MD, is a general internist with research interests in reproductive health care for women with chronic medical conditions.
Roxanne Parrott, PhD, is a health communication researcher with specific interests in women's health.
Diana Velott, MPA, is an instructor in health services research and project coordinator for a multisite study of fertility patterns following cesarean section delivery.
Lori A. Francis, PhD, is a developmental psychologist with research interests in eating behaviors and the family environment.
Sara A. Baker, PhD, is project director for the Central Pennsylvania Women's Health Study.
Anne-Marie Dyer, MS, is the data manager and chief data analyst for the Central Pennsylvania Women's Health Study.
Vernon M. Chinchilli, PhD, is a biostatistician with interests in clinical trails research.
The authors have no direct financial interests that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted manuscript.
Funded, in part, under grant number 4100020719 with the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The department specifically disclaims responsibility for any analyses, interpretations, or conclusions.