Main findings
Our aims were to investigate predictors for late antenatal care
initiation; and to assess whether hypothetically intervening on early
pregnancy recognition would reduce some of these inequalities in late
antenatal care initiation. The results of our study showed that almost
one out of five pregnant participants started antenatal care only after
14 weeks of pregnancy during the study period between 2002 and 2006 in
Rotterdam. Participants who recognized their pregnancy within the first
6 weeks had their first visit in antenatal care on average 4.4 days
earlier than those who recognized their pregnancy later than 6 weeks.
All predictors were associated with timing of antenatal care initiation,
and the associations were most strong for age, migration background,
pregnancy intention, parity, education, household income, employment,
neighborhood deprivation, and Dutch language skills. Hypothetically
intervening on early pregnancy recognition ≤6 weeks may reduce these
differences for all of these predictors except for parity and language
skills.