Sustainable antenatal care services in an urban Indigenous community: the Townsville experience

Objective: To evaluate the impact of a sustained, community‐based collaborative approach to antenatal care services for Indigenous women. Design: Prospective quality improvement intervention, the Mums and Babies program, in a cohort of women attending Townsville Aboriginal and Islanders Health Service, 1 January 2000 – 31 December 2005 (MB group), compared with a historical control group (PreMB group), 1 January 1998 – 30 June 1999. Main outcome measures: Proportion of women having inadequate antenatal care and screening; perinatal indicators. Results: The number of antenatal visits per pregnancy increased from three (interquartile range [IQR], two to six) in the PreMB group to six (IQR, four to ten) in the MB group (P