Toward a healthier pregnancy: Overcoming barriers to prenatal exercise
A limited understanding of what constitutes safe prenatal exercise among expectant mothers contributes to the low percentage of individuals meeting these exercise guidelines. Additionally, many health-care professionals do not routinely advise their pregnant patients on the subject, despite a wealth of research supporting the positive impact of exercise on maternal and fetal health.
Eat Healthy During Pregnancy: Quick Tips
When you’re pregnant, you need more of certain nutrients — like protein, iron, folic acid, iodine, and choline. It’s also important to get enough calcium, vitamin D, potassium, and fiber. Making smart food choices can help you have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. Here are some ideas to help you eat healthy during pregnancy.
COVID during pregnancy may alter brain development
Boys born to mothers who got COVID-19 while pregnant appear nearly twice as likely as other boys to be diagnosed with subtle delays in brain development. That’s the conclusion of a study of more than 18,000 children born at eight hospitals in Eastern Massachusetts. Nearly 900 of the children were born to mothers who had COVID during their pregnancy.
Being, Doing, and Having all work together to support a healthy pregnancy
Even though some progress has been made in educating women about the need to have a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy, the fact is that the results are meager in terms of actual improvements in pregnancy outcomes or later health outcomes. This could be because better knowledge about a cause-effect relationship is not the same as better awareness, the latter including an emotional and volitional change that may lead to altered health behavior, unlike the merely cognitive gains associated with the former approach.
Province invests in maternity care, expands UBC midwifery program
The expansion at UBC adds 20 new seats to the program, bringing the total annual intake to 48. This includes 12 new seats in the bachelor of midwifery program, bringing the total annual intake from 20 to 32, and eight new seats in the Internationally Educated Midwives Bridging Program (IEMBP), bringing the annual intake from eight to 16. The IEMBP is an eight-to-10-month program that allows internationally educated midwives to become registered to practise in B.C. and is the only program of its kind in Canada.
5 Trends Impacting Maternal and Infant Health in 2023
The rising risks that dominate the maternal and infant health landscape are tied to an intricate mix of factors, ranging from political and regulatory shifts to economic pressures to healthcare workforce shortages, systemic bias leading to a loss of trust among communities of color, and unhealthy lifestyle habits exacerbated by the pandemic. But against the backdrop of rising risks, the year ahead holds potential bright spots.