A salutary childbirth education program: Health promoting by design. A discussion paper

Pregnancy is an ideal time to focus on health promotion. Many women and their partners attend childbirth education classes to prepare themselves for pregnancy, birth and parenting. However, rather than promoting health, these classes have been criticized for preparing women and their partners for a medicalized birth, which has become the norm in many well-resourced countries. This paper describes the development of a childbirth education program using the theory of salutogenesis. While much has been written about the theory, few have attempted to operationalize the theory for health service delivery, particularly in the maternity care context. The aim of the program was to move individuals participating in the program towards greater health on the health-ease/dis-ease continuum by increasing their sense of coherence, focusing on generalized resistance resources and strengthening the key components comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. This paper describes the development of the program.