Prenatal and puerperium nutritional care from an integrality perspective in a city of Baixada Santista, São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract Objectives: to perform a comparative assessment of the nutritional care process in the prenatal and puerperium periods at a primary care unit in the city of Santos, SP, Brazil before and after the implantation of the Prenatal and Puerperium Nutritional Care Strategy. Methods: a cross-sectional study was composed of 58 pairs of women and their children, of whom, 30 underwent prenatal care before and 28 of them after the implantation by collecting data from perinatal registrations and children's charts. The care was evaluated by the official National guidelines. The chi-square test was used to compare variables between the pre and post intervention groups. Results: there was a significant improvement after the nutritional intervention, regarding to height (p=0.001), registration on pre-pregnancy weight (p=0.032), follow up on Body Mass Index/gestational week (p=0.001), registration on newborn’s weight at discharge (p=0.011) and daily weight gain at the first pediatric consultation (p=0.019). Conclusions: the Prenatal and Puerperal Nutritional Care Strategy contributed to improve maternal-child nutritional care and the data registration on patients’ charts, demonstrating the necessity to establish processes/flows and an integral care for this population.