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Ed Yeates ReportingIt may take a while for women to get accustomed to some new national guidelines suggesting they think of themselves as "always pregnant."
The CDC is just one of more than 30 national groups, a coalition now, proposing that women do some things as if they were "always pregnant," whether they are or not.
Nan Streeter, Director, Maternal And Child Health Bureau: "The awareness of what a woman can do to enhance her health regardless of whether she ever intends to get pregnant."
Nan Streeter, who heads the State Health Department's Maternal and Child Health Bureau, was on the steering committee that helped draft the guidelines. The timeline is fairly sweeping.
The program is designed to begin very early in a woman's life; in fact, in the pre-teen years when a girl is in elementary or junior high school. That means from the first menstrual period all the way to menopause, the woman adopts the same health practices -- taking folic acid supplements, no smoking, maintaining a healthy weight and controlling chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes.
Nan Streeter: "We would want to target them specifically and then work backwards and make sure young kids are aware of these important practices."
Nan Streeter hopes women here and across the country will take the guidelines in the right spirit, the way they're intended.
Nan Streeter: "The recommendations were never designed to promote the concept that women need to bare children."
They just make good common sense, she says, protecting the health of all concerned.
