Poor birth outcomes, especially for communities of color, are a persistent health issue for our country. While there is no “cure” for preterm birth, the leading contributor to poor birth outcomes, group prenatal care is an evidence-based practice to reduce pre-term birth, especially for urban African American communities.
Group prenatal care provides a host of other benefits including improved breastfeeding rates, enhanced parental knowledge, and better pregnancy spacing. In addition, decreasing preterm birth provides tremendous cost savings.
The Centering Health Institute (CHI) has developed a successful model of group prenatal care called CenteringPregnancy™. CenteringPregnancy empowers patients, strengthens patient-provider relationships, and builds communities through three main components of health assessment, community building, and interactive learning delivered as a series of group visits with pregnant individuals at similar gestational age.
While more prenatal providers are offering Centering as a model of care, not every pregnant individual has access to this model. Maternity care in rural America is facing a crisis in access, and the COVID-19 pandemic required organizations to shift to care delivered through telehealth.
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