Innovative Approaches for Integrating Preconception Health Concepts into Adolescent Health Efforts

Background: Health trajectories are developed over the course of a lifetime, thus public health professionals are beginning to incorporate preconception health approaches into public health initiatives. The underlying basis for these efforts is the knowledge that health habits initiated during sensitive developmental periods can impact present and future health. Since 2009, the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs, in partnership with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, has designed strategies to bridge the gap between women's and adolescent preventive health efforts and help states implement the CDC Recommendations to Improve Preconception Health and Health Care. Methods: The Action Learning Collaborative (ALC) methodology is a quality improvement strategy in which cross-disciplinary state teams are convened to consider a problem or opportunity and work collectively to design strategies to address it. Results: Teams from Missouri, Oregon, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Utah are currently implementing innovative strategies that include: creating and disseminating reproductive life planning tools for adolescents; revising a health curriculum to include preconception health; integrating preconception health into state department of education core health curriculum; and developing a model policy for integrating youth with disabilities in preconception health efforts. Conclusions: Adolescents are a key population for these efforts since we know that health habits initiated during adolescence can have a great impact on present and future health. The results of this ALC serve as models for national practice related to the integration of adolescent and preconception health in order to improve present and future health outcomes.