Health Promotion Practice and Its Associated Factors among Pregnant Mothers Attending ANC Services in Public Health Institution of Mekelle City, Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

Introduction: Health promotion involves supporting personal and social development through providing information health education, and life skill straining, thereby increasing option for people to exercise more over control their own health and their environment, and to make choice conducive in health. A number of potentially modifiable risk factors are known to be associated with poor pregnancy out comes. However, to our knowledge no previous tangible research was done in the study area about health promotion. Thus, this paper, attempts to assess health promotion practice and its associated factors among pregnant women attending ANC services in public health institutions of Mekelle City. Methods: An institutional based cross-sectional survey was conducted among 278 pregnant mothers at Mekelle city from December to June/ 2014. Simple random sampling technique with Probabilities proportional to size allocation technique was used. Data were analyzed by SPSS window version 20.0 soft ware package and presented using frequencies, percentages, crude odds Ratio, 95% Confidence Intervals and multiple logistic-regressions to adjust for possible confounding variables. Finally, the result of the study was presented using texts, figures and tables. Results: Out of 278 pregnant mothers who were participated in this study, 268 of them responded to the questionnaire making a response rate of 96.4%. The mean age of the participants was 25.87 (± 5.717) years, while the age range was 15-44. This research showed 79.9% of the respondents were found to have good Health promotion practices during their pregnancy. The major factors for health promotion practice during pregnancy were income, parity and unintended pregnancy. Women whose unintended pregnancies were 0.79 less likely to practice health promotion than women whose intended pregnancy (AOR= 0.21[0.07-0.56]). This finding strongly suggests that the government provide the issue of women education and empowerment more seriously to increase health promotion activity as a way of reducing maternal mortality in the country. And moreover antenatal care clinics should give due emphasis to provide the vital information and education to all pregnant women about health promotional activity.