Maternal and Child Health - Essay Sample

Introduction

Maternal and child health are healthcare services offered to children and mothers in the child-bearing age. The focus for maternal and child health is on women in their reproductive age groups. Women's reproductive range is regarded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2019) to be between fifteen to forty-nine years while child health encompasses every child, adolescent, and school-age population. Globally, especially in developing countries, there is a high demand and concern for maternal care. Generally, maternal care covers various health care dimensions, including postnatal, prenatal, preconception, and family planning.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Public Health Importance of Maternal Care

Maternal care is essential to the public's health because it aims to advance mothers, infants, and children's wellbeing. Good health for mothers, infants, and children is detrimental because it determines the next generation's wellbeing. It can also help foresee upcoming public health challenges for countries and their healthcare system (Herbst & Tekin, 2013). More so, it provides an opportunity to discover the existing health risks that women face during pregnancy, such as unhealthy weight, depression, diabetes, intimate partner violence, genetic conditions and hypertension, and other heart diseases (Johnson, 2020). Improvement of maternal and child health care improves the infant's wellbeing, thus preventing deaths or disability, making children pursue their goals effectively.

Analysis of Social Epidemiology

According to CDC (2019), women's reproductive range is between fifteen to forty-nine years. Further, social determinants contribute largely to maternal and child health care. Some of these factors include religion, culture, economic status, race/ethnicity, and gender. Besides, structural factors also influence the intermediary factors, either independently or in combination with other factors. These factors contribute to increment in maternal health service administration or result in increased deaths (Olive, 2020). Different socioeconomic groups also result in differential access to health care by maternal mothers.

Analysis of Current Strategies

Different strategies have been implemented to address issues concerning maternal and child care. Most of these strategies aim to solve health issues such as children dying before the age of five, unaddressed burden of stillbirths, and unequal global maternal health. In recent years there have been formulation of innovations and interventions to address issues like exorbitant maternal care. For instance, many countries took part in the Millennium Declaration of 2000 by the United Nations to aid eradicate unequal maternal care among many other challenges of that time (Smith et al., 2017). Even though there has been tremendous improvement in lessening the rate of child mortality and lowering maternal burdens, the process has been slow and uneven.

Conclusion

In conclusion, maternal and child health care is crucial because it focuses on improving maternal mothers, infants, and children's wellbeing. It encompasses health care dimensions of postnatal, family planning, prenatal, and preconception. Furthermore, social determinants like culture, religion, ethnicity, age, and gender contribute primarily to the implementation of maternal and child health care in countries worldwide. In recent years, strategies have been formulated to address child and maternal health care issues though the progress has been slow and uneven.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019, November 6). NSFG - Key Statistics from the National Survey of Family Growth. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics_2015_2017.htm.

Herbst, C. M., & Tekin, E. (2013). Child Care Subsidies, Maternal Health, And Child-Parent Interactions: Evidence from Three Nationally Representative Datasets. Health Economics, 23(8), 894–916.
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.2964

Johnson, W. (2020, September 30). Maternal, Infant, and Child health. Maternal, Infant, and Child health | Healthy People 2020.
https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/maternal-infant-and-child-health.

Olive, C. (2020, April 23). Maternal and Child health. American Public Health Association.
https://www.apha.org/topics-and-issues/maternal-and-child-health.

Smith, H. J., Portela, A. G., & Marston, C. (2017). Improving implementation of health promotion interventions for maternal and newborn health. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 17(1), 16–30.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-017-1450-1.