Australian Study Shows Importance of Healthy Lifestyle Education in Pregnancy

Research from Monash University, Australia, has highlighted the importance of incorporating healthy lifestyle programmes for pregnant women into their routine care plans. The research findings revealed that mums-to-be who have been supported by health professionals with a structured health programme containing evidence-based information achieve healthier pregnancies and reduced risk of pregnancy complications.

Published in the Jama Internal Medicine journal, the researchers reviewed 34,546 pregnancies and showed that all women, regardless of their weight at the time of conception, and whether they lived in developed or developing countries, benefitted from receiving information on nutrition and dietary intake and how to balance this with appropriate physical exercise.

All pregnant women could benefit from lifestyle support programmes

Professor Helena Teede, Director of the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation (MCHRI) at Monash University, and endocrinologist at Monash Health said that the importance of a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy has been understood for a long time, but this global evidence now highlights a critical need for routine access to structured health and lifestyle interventions during pregnancy health care to improve health outcomes for all women.

“Providing resources and weight monitoring alone was not enough to improve outcomes for mums and babies,” said Professor Teede. “Only when structured diet and physical activity support programs were delivered, did we see the health benefits.”

Making healthcare programmes part of routine pregnancy care

Dr Cheryce Harrison, senior author and co-lead of the Healthy Lifestyle Stream at MCHRI, said the team had already secured funding from the Government in Victoria to provide evidence-based programmes delivered by trained healthcare professionals, and thus start integrating them into routine pregnancy care for all women.

Dr Harrison added that the team were working with the Government to ensure national guidelines across Australia reflect this best practice evidence.

The researchers also highlighted the cost-benefit to national health systems and estimated that if the programmes were introduced routinely in pregnancy care there could be a cost-saving of around half a billion Australian dollars per year due to the reduced need for expensive interventions such as Caesarean sections and admissions into intensive neonatal care.