3206.0: Monday, November 13, 2000: 4:30 PM-6:00 PM

Evidence-based Maternity Care: Initiating a Dialogue Within the Public Health Community

The Cochrane Collaboration and its predecessors have produced an impressive body of systematic reviews about the safety and effectiveness of a broad range of maternity care practices. The reviews are primarily developed from carefully identified and evaluated controlled trials. They have been published for over a decade in various printed and electronic formats, and are regularly updated, revised, and reissued. On a smaller scale, other organizations and agencies have also begun to develop and issue formal evidence reports on maternity care topics. To a troubling degree, patterns of maternity care in the U.S. do not reflect care indicated by this exceptionally high-quality evidence. The data suggest that there are widespread errors of commission and of omission, as well as confident use of practices that are of unknown effectiveness. Despite the public health community’s commitment to maternal and child health, it is difficult to find even acknowledgment of these important resources and of the evidence-practice gap in public health discourse. The purpose of the proposed session is to initiate dialogue within this community about evidence-based maternity care (EMC) issues. Presentations will describe resources that are available to help clarify what constitutes evidence-based maternity care practice, will compare the evidence for selected maternity care interventions to patterns of practice, will present results of a national survey of professional organizations regarding their involvement with EMC, and will describe the Maternity Center Association’s new long-term multi-faceted program to promote EMC and its commitment to collaborating with a broad range of organizations within the MCH subsector
See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement.
Learning Objectives: Refer to the individual abstracts for learning objectives
Presider(s):Barbara A. Levin, MD, MPH
Facilitator(s):Maureen Corry, MPH
Discussant(s):Valerie J. King, MD, MPH
Organizer(s):Carol Sakala, PhD, MSPH
4:30 PMPrimer on resources for evidence-based maternity care
Carol Sakala, PhD, MSPH
4:40 PMMaternity care for low-risk women in the United States: Is there an evidence-practice gap?
Joan Liebmann-Smith, PhD, Judith Rooks, MPH, MS, CNM
4:50 PMInvolvement of professional MCH organizations in evidence-based maternity care: results of a national survey
Carol Sakala, PhD, MSPH, Eugene Declercq, PhD
5:00 PMThe effects of a mastery modeling, peer centered intervention for prenatal care on the self concept and self efficacy of adolescent mothers and on the incidence of low birthweight infants
Kathleen Ford, PhD, Linda Weglicki, PhDRN, Paulette Hoyer, PhDRNC, Trace Kershaw, MS, Cheryl Schram, Mary Jacobson, RNCMSN, Melvern Ayers, MD
5:10 PMHealthy beginnings Perinatal Education
Scott Gee, MD, Lynda Garrett, RN, MPH, Catherine Zacharia, MS
5:20 PMMaternity WiseTM: A new national program to promote evidence-based maternity care
Maureen Corry, MPH
Sponsor:Maternal and Child Health
Cosponsors:Community Health Planning and Policy Development; Epidemiology; Food and Nutrition; Public Health Education and Health Promotion; Public Health Nursing; Social Work; Socialist Caucus; Women's Caucus

The 128th Annual Meeting of APHA