ABOUT PRECONCEPTION HEALTH

What is Preconception Health
Preconception health is about promoting healthy living and giving babies the best start in life by improving birth outcomes. It includes a healthy body, healthy mind and healthy environment before becoming pregnant. By working with a health care provider before becoming pregnant to create a plan to become healthy and to choose when to have children, prepared parents-to-be will have a greater chance of having fewer pregnancy complications and better birth outcomes for their babies.

Life Course Perspective
The birth outcome of your pregnancy is the end product of not only your health during the nine months in which you are pregnant, but of your health during your entire life course leading up to the pregnancy.

Preconception Health and Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County is one of the most diverse places in the United States, with over half of the population made up by rapidly growing racial and ethnic minorities. Over 150,000 babies are born in Los Angeles County each year, and while pregnancies in Los Angeles County experience lower infant mortality, low birth weight births and preterm births than the nation as a whole, differences in outcomes exist among the different racial/ethnic groups in Los Angeles and among people living in different parts of the county. The goal of preconception health in Los Angeles is for every one to have a healthy pregnancy every time.