IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ijphth/v48y2003i1p24-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prevention of neural tube defects: effect of an intervention aimed at implementing the official recommendations

Author

Listed:
  • Veronika Egen
  • Joerg Hasford

Abstract

¶ Objectives: The periconceptional intake of 0.4 mg folic acid is recommended in many countries to prevent neural tube defects. This paper describes the poor implementation of corresponding guidelines in Germany, the effectiveness of an intervention-based on providing adequate information and the problems associated with the implementation.¶ Methods: Two cross sectional studies investigated knowledge, attitude, and behaviour of randomly sampled gynaecologists (n=24/27), pharmacists (n=21/21), and women in childbed (n=131/118) before and after the information campaign.¶ Results: Before the intervention, 3.8% of the women implemented folic-acid-prophylaxis compared with 9.3% afterwards (p=n.s.). The awareness of the prophylaxis before pregnancy correlated with socio-economic status and rose from 28% (before) to 42% after intervention (p>0.05). Before the intervention, 38% of the gynaecologists and 38% of the pharmacists recommended the prophylaxis compared with 74% (p>0.05) and 43% (p=n.s.) afterwards.¶ Conclusions: The effect of the intervention was small. To improve the situation, fortification of specially selected and labelled food should be considered. An accompanying nation-wide information campaign should focus on women with lower socio-economic status. Copyright Birkhäuser Verlag Basel, 2003

Suggested Citation

  • Veronika Egen & Joerg Hasford, 2003. "Prevention of neural tube defects: effect of an intervention aimed at implementing the official recommendations," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 48(1), pages 24-32, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ijphth:v:48:y:2003:i:1:p:24-32
    DOI: 10.1007/s000380300003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s000380300003
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s000380300003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:ijphth:v:48:y:2003:i:1:p:24-32. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.