Aims: Nearly one-fourth of African-American women receive no prenatal care during the first trimester of pregnancy. The aim of the current study is to identify factors that underlie inadequate prenatal care among African-American women. Maternal alcohol abuse has been examined as one risk factor for inadequate prenatal care, but findings have been…

When it comes to issues related to low-income women seeking early, adequate, or continuous prenatal care, the public health and medical communities continue to tell women to take responsibility for their actions. Rarely are messages aimed at providers. To help physicians see how factors in their offices and clinics can affect service utilization,…

To identify rates and factors associated with timely prenatal care (PNC) initiation, HIV test counseling, test offering, and test offer acceptance, we conducted a semistructured survey of a convenience sample of pregnant/recently delivered Hispanic women (n = 453, 418 with analyzable data) in four California counties in 2000. Only 68.4% and 43.5%…