ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief historical description of the development of prenatal care in Great Britain and the United State (US). It examines the available evidence for the effectiveness of prenatal care and focuses on outcome-based evaluations and touch only lightly on studies of the process or structure of prenatal care. Prenatal care has been universally considered to be beneficial and has been strongly supported by governments and the medical profession. Since the nature of prenatal care has been strongly influenced by political and professional factors in addition to medical considerations. The chapter describes policy developments affecting prenatal care. Although the pattern of events in the US appears to have been very similar to British developments, the specific public policy differs. The measurement of prenatal care has been simplistic in its conceptualization and quantification. There are multiple sets of methodological issues complicating the evaluation of prenatal care.
