Prevention of neural tube defects: effect of an intervention aimed at implementing the official recommendations

Veronika Egen and Joerg Hasford

International Journal of Public Health, 2003, vol. 48, issue 1, 24-32

Abstract: ¶ Objectives: The periconceptional intake of 0.4 mg folic acid is recommended in many countries to prevent neural tube defects. This paper describes the poor implementation of corresponding guidelines in Germany, the effectiveness of an intervention-based on providing adequate information and the problems associated with the implementation.¶ Methods: Two cross sectional studies investigated knowledge, attitude, and behaviour of randomly sampled gynaecologists (n=24/27), pharmacists (n=21/21), and women in childbed (n=131/118) before and after the information campaign.¶ Results: Before the intervention, 3.8% of the women implemented folic-acid-prophylaxis compared with 9.3% afterwards (p=n.s.). The awareness of the prophylaxis before pregnancy correlated with socio-economic status and rose from 28% (before) to 42% after intervention (p>0.05). Before the intervention, 38% of the gynaecologists and 38% of the pharmacists recommended the prophylaxis compared with 74% (p>0.05) and 43% (p=n.s.) afterwards.¶ Conclusions: The effect of the intervention was small. To improve the situation, fortification of specially selected and labelled food should be considered. An accompanying nation-wide information campaign should focus on women with lower socio-economic status. Copyright Birkhäuser Verlag Basel, 2003

Keywords: Key words.Neural tube defect – Folic acid – Practice guidelines – Health promotion. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s000380300003 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ijphth:v:48:y:2003:i:1:p:24-32

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/00038

DOI: 10.1007/s000380300003

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Thomas Kohlmann, Nino Künzli and Andrea Madarasova Geckova

More articles in International Journal of Public Health from Springer, Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().