25th May 2022

Unique challenges for mothers with multiple long-term conditions

1 in 5 pregnant women live with two or more long-term physical / mental health conditions. Examples include: diabetes, asthma, anxiety and depression.

Some women may need to attend many appointments with different specialist teams. Some may have to take multiple medications. This can be challenging when they have to juggle managing their health conditions with their role as a new mother. Their babies may be at risk of adverse outcomes such as prematurity and needing neonatal unit admission.

Health visitor’s role

Women with complex pregnancy may experience a lot of stress and anxiety during pregnancy and childbirth. They may take longer to recover, physical and mentally, after childbirth. Therefore, the support from health visitors beyond the 6-week postnatal period is invaluable, for the mother, infant, and family’s wellbeing and perinatal mental health.

The Mum-PreDiCT group wants to hear from health visitors

MuM-PreDiCT is a group of eight UK universities studying multiple long-term conditions in pregnancy. They want to find out what mother and baby outcomes are important to healthcare professionals (including health visitors).

They need help from health visitors to build a Core Outcome Set. This is a minimum standard list of outcomes that should be reported in all studies. This ensures that future studies measure what matters to health visitors, to help HVs make evidence-based decisions when caring for mothers with multiple conditions.