Author response — a wake-up call for preconception health

Judith Stephenson; Keith Godfrey; Kathryn Woods-Townsend

doi:10.3399/bjgp21X715961

We completely agree with John Sharvill regarding the importance of education facilities in sharing messages about the importance of preconception health, and have developed LifeLab — a programme for school students centred on ‘Me, my health and my children’s health’. Engaging students with the science behind the health messages has been shown to increase health literacy in this important area.¹

Regarding aspirin, guidance from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is based on evidence that low-dose aspirin should be started by 16 weeks of pregnancy to have benefit in preventing pre-eclampsia. As women are commonly seen for antenatal scans etc. around 11–14 weeks, that is often the time when aspirin is started.

Starting low-dose aspirin in the first trimester is unnecessary and generally avoided, although some haematologists will start it early in specific cases of clotting abnormalities.

REFERENCE

1.↵
1. Woods-Townsend K,
2. Hardy-Johnson P,
3. Bagust L,
4. et al.
(2021) A cluster-randomised controlled trial of the LifeLab education intervention to improve health literacy in adolescents. PLoS One 16, 5, e0250545, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250545.
OpenUrl