Bump Start: developing and piloting a healthy living group intervention for obese pregnant women

Abstract

Pregnancy is a time when women may be particularly motivated to make healthy lifestyle changes, which is encouraging when maternal obesity remains such an important modifiable risk factor. However, offering the right ‘recipe’ of support can be challenging for midwives. They report lacking time and confidence for ongoing discussions about diet and physical activity in consultations, and a lack of local evidence-based supportive services to which they can refer interested women. This article reports the efforts of a team of midwives, health psychologists, dieticians and physiotherapists to use theory and evidence to develop and pilot a community-based programme to address this issue. Bump Start aims to encourage healthy lifestyle changes in overweight antenatal women in a health board in Scotland. It presents initial findings from the first pilot, highlighting particular factors that went well and challenges that presented themselves along the way, in the hope of sharing learning with other teams.