Health education intervention on knowledge and accessibility of pregnant women to antenatal care services in Edu, Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

Objectives: Poor knowledge about importance of early antenatal care visit and awareness on health risk during pregnancy among pregnant women prevented them from accessing early antenatal care services. This study examined the impact of health education intervention (HEI) on access to antenatal care services by pregnant women in Edu Local Government Area (LGA), Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A quasi-experimental research employing pre-test and post-test control group design was adopted. A researchers-designed questionnaire was used for data collection and the split-half test of reliability was used to determine its reliability. One hundred and twenty pregnant women were exposed to 10 weeks of HEI after pre-test, 60 experimental groups were exposed to the lectures on antenatal care services, and 60 control groups were exposed to HIV/AIDS sessions, followed by post-test. The descriptive statistics was used to answer research questions, while the inferential statistics of t-test was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 significance level. Results: This study showed upward shift from pre-intervention mean of 71.08 to 93.33 post intervention mean in the experimental groups which implied the positive impact of HEI on the knowledge and willingness of pregnant women to access antenatal care services in Edu LGA. Conclusions: It was concluded that HEI could have positive impact on the knowledge and willingness of pregnant women to access antenatal care services, hence HEI needs to be sustained to improve the pregnant women’s health-seeking behaviors about antenatal care services in Edu LGA.