Protecting children’s health as an essential part of intellectual, reproductive, labor, and human capacity provides the basis for the search and development of risk management mechanisms.
OBJECTIVE
To analyze the trends of pregnant women’s medical and social characteristics over 1995—2020 regarding the risk to children’s health.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The results of the analysis of a set of retrospective data from 1.565 mothers of newborns from six cohorts collected in the Vologda region in 1995, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2014, and 2020, as well as an obstetric history of their pregnancies and childbirths are presented. An intercohort method (to show the change of the main socio-demographic, economic and biomedical characteristics of pregnant women) and an intracohort method of analyzing medical data (on the health of children, participants in monitoring as they grow up to identify the significance of mother-related risk factors for their health by calculating the relative risk indicator) were used.
RESULTS
Positive trends were identified: the number of planned, preserved pregnancies and children born to families increased; the relationship became stronger; the educational level and social status of pregnant women improved; the working conditions of the future mother, the material, housing, municipal and environmental conditions of families, the state of health and self-esteem improved; the proportion of smoking women decreased; and the quality of obstetric care improved. Negative trends: women in labor got older; the proportion of smoking women (and the number of cigarettes smoked increased) with mental stress and exposure to harmful working conditions remained high, who do not want to improve nutrition during pregnancy. The incidence of hypertension increased, and the frequency of various disorders of the endocrine and genitourinary system during pregnancy was higher; surgical delivery methods were more often used.
CONCLUSIONS
Despite the improvement of the quality of life of future parents over the past 25 years and the improvement of medical care, further work is required to prevent malnutrition, smoking, and endocrine diseases, as well as to eliminate harmful working and living conditions for pregnant women, increase the housing affordability and develop medical care for pregnant women to protect the health of future generations.
