The assessment of health risks and life styles of pregnant women in Elazığ province center

Before the pregnancy, the review of general life style habits and the evaluation of healthy risks are important for the healthy and quality pregnancy period. This study is aimed to evaluate the lifestyle and healthy risks of pregnant women in Elazig city center. This cross-sectional study was made with 565 of 585 pregnant women records reached from 20 Family Medicine Units by cluster-sampling method among 2935 pregnant women enrolled at 102 Family Medicine Unit located in Elazig city center. Data were collected from the survey prepared by literature sources and percentage, average, Fisher?s Exact Test and X² (chi-square) were used in the evaluation of data. The average age of women was 28.44 ± 5.94 years and the amount of monthly income of families was 1866.19 ± 1491.34 TL. 40.2% of pregnant women were graduated from high school/university, 19.6% of these women were working at a incoming job and 84.4% these were core-family type. In genearal, 63.0% of pregnant women in this study were satisfied with life style, 22.1% did not agree with the decisions in the family, 33.8% were not under regular health checks. 8.9% of those pregnant women were current smokers. 4.4% those had been exposed to any type of violence in pregnancy period. 18.6% were not under regular pregnancy checks. It was seen that with increase in educational status of women and their spouses and in their monthly income, working in income-generation job, having social security and core-family status, women had increased participitation in familiy decisions and life-satisfaction more, the pregnant women from high school/university graduates and women with their husbands working in incoming-generating job judged to be have higher grade healthy status and pregnancy checks were higher with increase in educational position and also when compared with others adolescence or advanced age pregnancies were less freaquently seen in pregnant women from high school/university (P<0.05). As a result, it was seen that sociodemographic features of pregnant women in this study effected their life styles and healthy behaviors in preganancy period. With multidisciplinary approach, regulations should be made to reduce health risks of pregnant women with improvement in life style and decrese in health risks (P<0.05). Key words: Pregnant women, sociodemographic characteristics, life style, health risks.