Wellness intervention with pregnant soldiers

The purpose of this study was to measure the effects that wellness program intervention for pregnant soldiers, exercise and/or education, had on methods of delivery, pregnancy outcomes, rates of complications, Army Physical Fitness Test scores, and labor and delivery costs. The study consisted of a retrospective review and analysis of 823 active duty Army obstetric and newborn records, 181 Army Physical Fitness Test records, and 411 initial and 148 postpartum subjective questionnaires. Data were collected from records of soldiers who delivered at Madigan Army Medical Center (Tacoma, Washington) between January 1992 and December 1994. Group I (N = 211) included soldiers who received wellness intervention, group II (N = 147) included those who did not receive wellness intervention. Limited data from the records of soldiers who delivered before a wellness program was offered on post constituted group III, a historical control group (N = 413). Group IV included data from a high-risk population (N = 52) collected during the wellness program. Data were also divided into additional subgroups to ascertain if one aspect of the wellness program (i.e., exercise versus education) influenced any or all of the dependent variables. A soldier's data were excluded if a pregnancy was terminated before 20 weeks of gestation or if it was a multiple gestation. Demographic data and variables were compared using multivariate methods of analysis to evaluate the effect of the independent variable, wellness intervention. Results indicated that infants of the wellness group participants had proportionately increased gestational age and birth weight, with reduced incidence of the complications fetal bradycardia, hyperbilirubinemia, preeclampsia, and premature labor. Likewise, African-American female soldiers in this study, assessed in other studies as a high-risk group, had a lower incidence of premature delivery and low birth weight when they participated in wellness intervention. Of clinical interest, it appeared as though wellness intervention shortened labor duration and reduced the number of neonatal intensive care unit admissions and the number of neonatal intensive care unit days, which resulted in reduced health care costs.