Complexity of Breastfeeding on Child/Maternal Health and Counseling Intervention

This chapter is a critical review of the complexities of breastfeeding and its attending effects on the health of the Mother and Child. The researcher employs a historical research approach to gather both theoretical and empirical facts on this issue. It was discovered that in spite of the pragmatic and frantic efforts by different individuals, organizations, governments and non-governmental bodies in establishing a universal, healthy and safest method of breastfeeding through research, publications, workshops and so on, based on the unavoidable and uncompromising importance and benefits to maternal and child health, it is on record that the maternal behaviour is still obviously at variance to the acceptability of full breastfeeding as promulgated and declared by World Health Organization (WHO). A serious, dedicated, pragmatic and coordinated counseling approach is therefore recommended to be adopted to revive and strengthening a positive behaviour in women to foster positive attitude towards breastfeeding to guarantee 100% morbidity and mortality rate in Maternal and Child health.

MotherCare App for Expectant Mothers in Interior Parts of Pakistan

Pregnancy, as a matter of fact, is always physically and emotionally challenging for women. Rapid physical changes with baby's growth in the womb exposes the mother to severe mood swings from short spell of merriment to long spells of anxiety and depression about upcoming child's health, its wellbeing, and so on. Most of the third world countries with their struggling economies have patriarchal social fabric, a fact that makes it worse for women of these societies to healthily tackle or seek help during gestation. The main goal of the proposed application, MothersCare, is to help the expecting mothers when they need it most. It will help them choose the right physician and request appointments from the comfort of homes, barring cumbersome wait for turn in long queues in rush hours for appointments with doctors at hospitals. This app is absolutely user-friendly in terms of simplicity of use and wide spectrum of maternal healthcare services it offers.

A Clinical Recommendation System to Maternity Care

Nowadays in healthcare, the Clinical Decision Support Systems are used in order to help health professionals to take an evidence-based decision. An example is the Clinical Recommendation Systems. In this sense, a pre-triage system was developed and implemented in Centro Hospitalar do Porto in order to group the patients on two levels (urgent or outpatient). However, although this system is calibrated and specific to the urgency of obstetrics and gynaecology, it does not meet all clinical requirements by the general department of the Portuguese HealthCare (Direção Geral de Saúde). The main requirement is the need of having priority triage system characterized by five levels. Thus some studies have been conducted with the aim of presenting a methodology able to evolve the pre-triage system on a Clinical Recommendation System with five levels. After some tests (using data mining and simulation techniques), it has been validated the possibility of transformation the pre-triage system in a Clinical Recommendation System in the obstetric context. At the end the main indicators achieved with this system are presented in the Business Intelligence Platform already deployed. This paper presents an overview of the Clinical Recommendation System for obstetric triage, the model developed and the main results achieved.

Scaling the Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI)

The infant mortality rate (IMR) and maternal mortality ratio (MMR) are unacceptably high in many parts of rural India. This article focuses on a system analysis approach to the best practices for scaling and replicating of maternal and newborn survival initiative (MANSI), a field-tested pilot program for addressing high IMRs and MMRs. A system dynamics model of the village birthing system is used to understand the resources needed for the viability of scaling or replication, is constructed and incorporated in the analysis. The MANSI program is a public and private partnership between a few key players. Implemented in the Seraikela area of India's Jharkhand state, the program has achieved a 32.7% reduction in neonatal mortality, a 26.5% reduction in IMR, and a 50% increase in hospital births, which tend to have better health outcomes for women and newborns. The authors conclude with a discussion of the prospects for and difficulties of replicating MANSI in other resource-constrained areas, not only in India but in other developing countries as well.

County Socioeconomic Deprivation and Preterm Birth Risk Between White and Black Mothers in Georgia, USA

Past studies have reported the association between living in a socioeconomically deprived neighborhood and elevated preterm births (PtB) risk after adjusting certain individual level confounders. This article examined the association between county-level deprivation and PtB risk of three stratified racial groups, white, black, and the others. The author built two level random intercept logistic regression models using 112,589 single live births retrieved from vital statistics record in Georgia, USA in 2010. Although county level deprivation was found to be insignificant for PtB risk for the entire study population, it had a significant yet modest effect on magnifying the PtB risk of black women (The odds ratio (OR) = 1.063,95% CI = 1.02, 1.12). In addition, the Median Odds Ratio (MOR) (1.229) indicated a weak neighborhood effect on PtB risk and the Interval Odds Ratio (IOR)-80% (0.68-1.49) suggested large unaccounted county-level heterogeneity. Future research will include more confounders at both levels in analysis as well as addressing the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP).

Teaching Childbirth Support Techniques Using the Prepared Partner and Digital Birth

In today's California, a mother's primary social support person in childbirth is her partner, guiding her through a multidimensional experience, helping her make sense of unforgettable emotions and sensations. Preparing the partner is an integral step to making sure that the mother is well-supported in her birth. Because the mother's experience is influenced by the support she receives, and because birth partners need more support than is recognized, we target birth partners with a learning intervention. We investigate video games as a vehicle for knowledge transfer to the birth partner, both as currently available and as a positive learning tool. To address the problem of limited access to childbirth preparation methods, we investigated, designed, and evaluated two games: The Prepared Partner, an online Flash game, and Digital Birth, an iPhone application. Both games allow the user to practice various supportive actions in the realm of childbirth support for a mother in labor. We found that players of The Prepared Partner met learning goals while enjoying the game.

User Experiences and Perceptions of Internet Interventions for Depression

The purpose of this chapter is to review qualitative research on user experiences with internet interventions for depression and present original results from in-depth interviews from a preventive unguided intervention for postpartum depression. The first part reviews the literature on qualitative studies of client experiences and perceptions of internet interventions for depression. The next part describes original data from a study investigating participants' experiences using semi-structured interviews, following the modified SWOT-format (i.e., strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats). In total, 10 pregnant and postpartum women aged 28 to 41 were interviewed. Insights from the current review and study are used as a point of departure for discussing future directions in research on internet interventions for depression. This chapter should be valuable for clinicians, researchers, and other health professionals interested in the applicability of internet interventions for their clients, design of future studies, and development of internet interventions.

Environmental Phthalate Exposure in Relation to Reproductive Outcomes and Other Health Endpoints in Humans

Phthalates are the class of chemicals that exhibit numerous adverse effects to health. These non-persistent chemicals are produced in high volume annually and are used in a wide array of industrial consumer products. The overall exposure of phthalates to humans is via ingestion of contaminated food from wrapped materials or dermally via consumer care products. Pthalates are anti-androgenic compounds, so for this reason, they obtrude with the expression of testosterone by manipulating gene expression of proteins and enzymes involved in production of testosterone. The primarily exposure of Pthalates during fetal development stage results in number of harmful effects in male offspring in humans, like abnormalities of the sperm-producing organs, abnormal development of penile, hypospadias, reduced anogenital distance, as well as a risk for prostate cancer and cryptorchidism. The purpose of this chapter was to review the environmental impact of phthalate exposure in relation to reproductive behavior and other health problems in humans.

Health Effects of Pesticides on Pregnant Women and Children

Pesticides, along with hybrid seeds and fertilizers, are an integral part of the green revolution and are used to control and eradicate disease vectors for the improvement of agricultural production. Pesticides is an umbrella term for insecticides, nematocides, fungicides, herbicides, fumigants, repellents, and attractants. Pesticides are used against unwanted plants and animals to control diseases and losses. Efforts at different levels may help to reduce the impact of pesticides on newborn babies and on pregnant women. Different efforts can be considered at clinical, educational, and policymaking institutes. Use of risk assessment tools, encouragement of organic diets, educating parents working in agricultural fields from hazards of pesticides particularly in pregnancy and breast feeding, implementation of integrated pest management (IPM) programs, and encouraging policies supporting IPM can help in tackling the menace of pesticide hazards.

A Predictive Analytic Model for Maternal Morbidity

This chapter presents a predictive analytic model for preventing neonatal morbidity through the analysis of patterns of risky behavior regarding morbidity in newborns. The chapter presents the design and implementation of a forecasting model of Neonatal morbidity. The model developed is based on artificial intelligence using Bayesian Networks, Influence Diagrams and principles of traditional statistics. The model research is based on a repository of 10,000 medical records at a hospital in Peru. The model aims to identify the factors that are causes of morbidity in newborns, is based on data mining techniques and developed using the CRISP-DM methodology.