Abstract:
Background: Preconception careis a set of interventions that aim to identify and modify biomedical, behavioral, and social risks to a woman’s health orpregnancy outcome through prevention and management.Addressing the health of reproductive age women and their partners before conception, using a range of Health intervention strategies is crucial to achieve positive outcomes and have myriads of benefits for the mother, newborn, family, and population at large. Although preconception care is recommended to be provided as part of other reproductive care services, its implementation status and practice in lower health care system isn’t clearly known.
Objectives:To assess determinants of preconception care knowledge among healthcare professionals working in selected health centers of Addis Ababa, 2022
Method: An institution based cross sectional study was done among 366 health professionals working in 29 health centers.Data were collected using previously validated self-administered questionnaire prepared in English. Five data collectors participated in the study and completed data was collected from participants on the same day of administration. Data entry and analysis was done using SPSS version 26 software. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize data and then regression analysis was done to identify determinants of preconception knowledge.
Results:The response rate for the study was 95.6%.Most of the participants were females 252(72%) with mean age of 29.69 years (SD+5.9) that ranges from 21 to 59 years.The level of good preconception care knowledge in this study was 63.4% (95% CI= 58.35, 68.44).Education level(AOR:2.40, 95% CI: 1.06-5.43), ever read preconception care guidelines (AOR:3.07, 95% CI: 1.66-5.34), seen others providing Preconception care (AOR:4.18, 95% CI: 2.22-7.57),and having more than five years work experience (AOR:2.28, 95% CI: 1.32-3.93) were identified as determinants of good preconception knowledge.
Conclusion and recommendation: About two-third of health care professionalsin the study had good preconception care knowledge. Their knowledge label was affected by profession, experience, level of education attained, and experience of reading PCC related guidelines. Therefore, there is a need to prepare thorough preconception care guidelines for health institutions and make them accessible forprofessionals, facilitate professional development for health workers.............Thesis available at Addis Continental Institute of Public Health Library