Prenatal Care in Metropolitan Boston

Abstract

This study is one of several undertaken to develop methods for evaluating the effectiveness of a proposed program of regional organization of health services in a large urban commnnity. The adequacy of prenatal care received by a representative sample of women was used as an index of the availability of medical care. Information concerning prenatal care was obtained by means of a self-administered questionnaire distributed on the second or third post-partum day, to all mothers who were delivered in 21 selected hospitals during one month. Marked differences were found between socieconomic groups in the amount of prenatal care obtained and in the receipt of dental services, both therapeutic and preventive. The method used to collect information about prenatal care is a relatively simple, efficient, and inexpensive one. By reference to generally accepted standards of antenatal supervision, the data provide a direct measurement of unmet need for medical care. The findings suggest that a satisfactory socioeconomic classification of families may be obtained by using average census-tract characteristics in place of social and economic information obtained from individual respondents. This method should permit comparative analysis of a variety of morbidity, mortality and other statistics which can be related to census tracts but for which socioeconomic information on an individual basis is not available.