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Published (Version of record)CC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Published (Version of record)CC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open
Journal article
Preconception health policy, health promotion, and health services to achieve health in current and future generations: a narrative review
BMC pregnancy and childbirth, Vol.25, pp.1-11
20/02/2025
PMID: 39979882
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Abstract
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) represent the leading cause of death and disability worldwide, and those NCDs contributing most burden - cardiometabolic illness, diabetes, cancer, chronic respiratory disease - can be largely prevented through improvements in health behaviours such as tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, exposure to environmental hazards, unhealthy dietary habits, and physical inactivity. Despite concerted efforts at all levels of health care provision and policy, population-level health behaviour change still presents an ongoing challenge to primary care clinicians, public health practitioners, health promotion specialists and government agencies around the world. An individual's age can influence their health behaviour decision-making as younger people often perceive the potential implications of their current poor health behaviours as remote in time and possibility, which may significantly limit their motivation to make a positive health behaviour change in the present. Yet public health researchers and practitioners recognise that a lifecourse approach to public health policies and interventions has the potential to reduce the risk of NCDs developing before conception and throughout life, as well as impacting the transmission of the benefits of health improvement from one generation to the next. Given the growing awareness of the benefits of a lifecourse approach to public health, a focus on improving preconception health at a population-level provides a unique opportunity for behaviour change motivation, NCD prevention and reducing inequalities across generations. Through this narrative review, we describe how three main public health strategies - health policy, health promotion and health services - may address the challenge of improving preconception health. We also explore the potential value of leveraging parental motivation in the preconception period to achieve positive health behaviour change and, in doing so, meet broader public health goals. We set out a framework for drawing on established public health methods and priorities to address structural inequalities and harness parental motivation and concern for their offspring to build and enable new and positive health behaviours that benefit current and future generations.
Details
- Title
- Preconception health policy, health promotion, and health services to achieve health in current and future generations: a narrative review
- Creators
- Amie Steel - University of Technology SydneySofia Strommer - MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology UnitJon Adams - University of Technology SydneyDanielle Schoenaker - NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre
- Publication Details
- BMC pregnancy and childbirth, Vol.25, pp.1-11
- Publisher
- Springer Nature
- Grant note
- NIHR302955 / National Institute for Health and Care Research FT220100610 / Australian Research Council
- Identifiers
- 991013262408202368
- Copyright
- © The Author(s) 2025
- Academic Unit
- National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article