Doctors recommend at least one prenatal care visit during the first trimester of pregnancy.
A recent study of women covered by private insurance or California Medicaid suggests an important role for other barriers to care in addition to lack of insurance. Apparently, focusing on noninsurance barriers to care just during pregnancy may not be the best approach to improving timely prenatal care. Instead, broad social and health policies need to focus on low-income women before they become pregnant. These include reducing barriers to effective family planning, increasing the proportions of nonpregnant women who have a regular source of health care, and reducing the disadvantages associated with lack of education beyond high school, according to study leader Paula Braveman, M.D., M.P.H., and her colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco. The women were interviewed after delivery during 1994-1995.