Women's health issues : official publication of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health
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Womens Health Issues · Jul 2006
ReviewMorbidity and mortality in pregnancy: laying the groundwork for safe motherhood.
The Safe Motherhood Initiative is a global effort to reduce deaths and illnesses among women and infants. Despite the relatively low maternal mortality rate in the United States, ensuring safe motherhood is still critical. For several reasons, it is important to study maternal mortality and morbidity. ⋯ Broadening the research focus and prevention efforts to include the study of maternal morbidity, especially near-miss morbidity-life-threatening morbidity-can strengthen the study of maternal death. This paper presents an overview of maternal mortality and morbidity including incidence and etiology, issues and challenges for measurement, and issues of preventability. We also address specific strategies for change for health care providers, federal and state health agencies, and the public health community.
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Womens Health Issues · Jul 2003
ReviewThe primary prevention of heart disease in women through health behavior change promotion in primary care.
To summarize recent evidence-based recommendations for physical activity promotion, dietary improvement, and tobacco cessation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (CTF), and examine their applicability to the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women through primary care interventions. ⋯ Primary care clinicians, including obstetrician-gynecologists, can contribute to preventing CVD in women through implementing credible evidence-based recommendations for clinical interventions in tobacco and healthy diet. Researchers can further our understanding of gender-specific issues in healthy behavior interventions by reporting process and outcome data for gender and minority subgroups.