The interconceptional period provides an opportunity to address women’s acute and chronic medical issues (such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity) as well as educate them about important practices that can improve the outcome of subsequent pregnancies (such as taking folic acid, quitting smoking, and birth spacing of 2 years or more). Counseling services were provided by most grantees on a wide range of topics, including the importance of interconceptional care (98 percent); family planning counseling (97 percent); and education about the risk of short birth intervals (97 percent). Projects offering these services typically provided them to three-fourths or more of their interconceptional clients.

Grantees were less likely to offer services that addressed medical risk factors, including hypertension follow-up (74 percent), diabetes follow-up (73 percent), and obesity reduction (71 percent). When these services were offered, grantees reported they were typically received by fewer than half of all interconceptional clients. However, because not all women require these services, it is not possible to gauge the extent to which the need for these services is being met by Healthy Start.