Oral Presentation Australian & New Zealand Obesity Society 2015 Annual Scientific Meeting

Preconception weight management: an untapped area of women’s health (#107)

Skye McPhie 1
  1. Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

Background: A substantial proportion of women enter pregnancy overweight or obese and are in turn at risk of excessive gestational weight gain and post-partum weight retention. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify barriers to providing preconception healthcare, particularly preconception weight management. Methods: Twenty health professionals (8 midwives, 3 obstetricians, 4 primary health practitioners, and 5 health stakeholders) participated in a semi-structured phone interview eliciting their beliefs about women’s understanding of preconception weight and the barriers to preconception weight management. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and examined using thematic content analysis to extract the key themes. Results: Four themes were identified from the interviews. The first of which is there is a lack awareness ofpreconception health messages, particularly those relating to weight, amongst women. Additionally, the current Australian healthcare system does not support preconception weight management and there are conflicting ideas about where this service should be provided. Thirdly, health professionals understand the importance of preconception weight status but are not engaging in practices to manage this. Finally many pregnancies are not planned, and the ‘preconception’ stage includes a large group of women, thereby increasing the difficulty of delivering preconception weight management interventions. Implications: There are significant barriers for implementing preconception weight management. According to the views of the health professionals, women are not well informed about the impact of their pre-pregnancy weight status on their own and their child’s health. This is likely to be influenced by such information not being widely disseminated in Australia. The tailoring the healthcare to offer preconception weight management services, particularly to overweight and obese women remains an untapped area. Therefore to address such barriers, approaches including a multi-faceted education public health campaign and up-skilling of health professionals may be of benefit.