Environmental Health in Perinatal and Early Childhood: Awareness, Representation, Knowledge and Practice of Southern France Perinatal Health Professionals

Abstract

The exposure of adults of reproductive age as well as pregnant women and children to environmental contaminants is of particular concern, as it can impact fertility, in utero development, pregnancy outcomes and child health. Consequently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and international societies advocate including Environmental Health (EH) in perinatal care, yet perinatal health professionals (HPs) hardly put these recommendations into practice. In 2017, a cross-sectional study was performed in a large panel of perinatal HPs in south-eastern France with the aim of painting a picture of their current attitudes, representation, knowledge, and training expectations. Quantitative and qualitative information was collected via auto-questionnaire. Questionnaires were completed by 962 participants, mainly midwives (41.1%), physicians (25.6%) and nursery nurses (11%). Indoor/outdoor air quality and endocrine disruptors were the best-mastered topics, whereas electromagnetic fields and diet gave rise to unsure responses. Overall, perinatal HPs were ill-trained and -informed about the reproductive risks linked to daily environmental exposure. HPs reported scarce knowledge, fear of patient reaction and lack of solutions as the main barriers to providing information regarding EH to the public. Our findings highlight the need to set up EH training programmes focused on scientific knowledge and to provide simple messages and tips to help perinatal HPs deliver advice to populations to mitigate exposure to environmental toxicants.

Perception of Environmental Risks and Behavioral Changes during Pregnancy: A Cross-Sectional Study of French Postpartum Women

“…An American survey found that less than 20% of obstetricians routinely interview their patients about their environment [32]. The difficulties most frequently cited were the lack of training and knowledge in environmental health, the lack of evidence-based information, the short duration of consultations [30,31,32,33], the fear of patient reactions, and the lack of solutions [33].…”

Environmental Health Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of French Prenatal Professionals Working with a Socially Underprivileged Population: A Qualitative Study

“…In an American study, only 1 out of 15 obstetricians said he had been trained in environmental health, a field in which the participants were nonetheless interested, and would like to be trained [17]. In France, only 17% of the health professional population had heard about environmental health during the course of their initial training [13].…”

“…To date, among the studies on the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices of prenatal professionals in the field of environmental health [6], only 7 out of 43 are European. Three recent studies took place in France [11,12,13] but did not focus on vulnerable populations. We conducted a qualitative study whose objective was to identify the knowledge, attitudes, and practices on environmental health of French prenatal professionals working with an underprivileged population.…”

Psychometric validation of the children's environmental health questionnaires in community nurses

“…Sunyach et al. (2018) conducted a survey on perinatal health professionals (HPs) in southeastern France. According to this survey, perinatal HPs lack training and understanding of the reproductive risks about daily environmental exposure.…”