• The effects of mothers' knowledge on the health of babies and fetuses during pregnancy
  • Reihaneh Rezaei,1,* Zeinab Sadat Moosavifard,2
    1. BSc in Nursing, Department of Nursing, Bandar Abbas Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas, Iran.
    2. Department of Nursing, faculty of nursing, Bandar Abbas Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas, Iran.


  • Introduction: The most important guarantor of maintaining the health of the mother and the fetus during pregnancy is to be aware of the cares during this period and to act on them. Health literacy is an important and modifiable factor to improve the achievement of this awareness. For this purpose, the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the level of health literacy of pregnant mothers and its relationship with prenatal care in Shiraz city in 2019.
  • Methods: This research is a descriptive analytical cross-sectional study that was conducted in 2019 on 205 pregnant women who referred to health centers in Shiraz city. People were selected by simple random sampling and the data collection tool was the MHLAPQ Maternal Health Literacy and Pregnancy Outcomes Questionnaire. Data analysis was done with spss software version 19 and statistical tests, T-test, ANOVA, correlation and chi-square. In all tests, 0.5 was considered as a significant level.
  • Results: The findings of the research show that 69% of the pregnant women studied were employed and 91% had higher than bachelor's education. The average health literacy score of pregnant mothers was 94.9±07.57; Also, there was a significant relationship between mothers' health literacy and job education level > 0.05, 0.1000. But there was no significant relationship between the use of multivitamin supplement 0.261>0.05 and the use of iron supplement 0.507>0.05.
  • Conclusion: The results showed that the state of health literacy among pregnant mothers in Shiraz is in a favorable state. Considering that there was a significant relationship between the health literacy of mothers, occupation and education, this issue shows the need to pay more attention to improving the education of women in the society and their occupational status in order to improve the health literacy of this segment of the society.
  • Keywords: mothers' knowledge , health , fetuses , pregnancy