Prenatal Immunization Education: The Pediatric Prenatal Visit and Routine Obstetric Care
Background
Vaccine safety concerns and lack of knowledge regarding vaccines contribute to delays in infant immunization. Prenatal vaccine education could improve risk communication and timely vaccination. This study sought to determine the proportion of obstetric practices and hospital-based prenatal education classes that provide pregnant women with infant immunization information, the willingness of obstetric practices to provide infant immunization information, and the proportion of first-time mothers who receive a pediatric prenatal visit.
Methods
A telephone survey was conducted of 100 pediatric practices and 100 obstetric practices randomly selected from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile between January and March 2005, with analysis performed April 2005.
Results
Seventy-one of 100 (71%) selected obstetric practices and 85 of 100 (85%) selected pediatric practices participated. Sixteen obstetric practices (23%) reported providing pregnant women with information on routine childhood immunizations. Thirty-four of the 52 practices (65%) that did not provide such information reported willingness to do so. Ten of 51 hospitals (20%) did not provide information about routine childhood immunizations to prenatal class participants. Sixty-six of the 85 pediatric practices (78%) provided a pediatric prenatal visit. Among these, the median percentage of first-time mothers who received a visit was 30%.
Conclusions
Prenatal visits are a missed opportunity for providing education about infant immunizations. Incorporating immunization education into routine obstetric prenatal care may increase maternal knowledge of infant vaccines and reduce delayed immunization.
aDepartment of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland
bInstitute for Vaccine Safety, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland
cDuke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina
dDepartment of Epidemiology and Health Policy Research, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Ann Marie Návar, MHS, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St, Suite W4051, Baltimore MD 21205.
ABSTRACT