Special issues in prenatal care outreach.

Approaches to prenatal care outreach taken by public providers vary widely. To date, few have evolved from systematic, data-based casefinding strategies. The following case study describes the findings of a research project concerned with both care seeking and care getting behaviors of low income women and the relationship between those behaviors and birthweight outcomes. Analysis of project data reveals that the greater the delay between seeking and getting care, the greater the likelihood of low birthweight. Application of this research data has yielded information useful to outreach planning, staff development and program evaluation procedures.