Development of a Group Prenatal Care Intervention to Address Maternal and Child Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) Risk in American Samoa

GPNC participants will attend 11 group sessions total: 10 during pregnancy and one postpartum. Each session will be 90-100 minutes long. Groups will collectively identify the preferred time of day for these sessions. Groups of 10 women will be led by a locally trained, Samoan nurse-midwife with the study Project Director as a co-facilitator. At each of the visits participants will engage in self-assessments of weight and blood pressure, including learning to take their blood pressure with a digital cuff, calculating BMI, and plotting their weight gain on a graph), receive short individual clinical examinations from a midwife, and participate in group discussions about prenatal care, childbirth preparation, and their postpartum care. The session at 6-weeks postpartum will allow women to introduce their babies to the group and share childbirth stories.

Standard of prenatal care