Implementing a prenatal health screening intervention for future fathers in Montreuil, France: most users are immigrants facing hardship

Abstract

Background: Prenatal care provides pregnant women with repeated opportunities for prevention, screening and diagnosis that have no current extension to future fathers. It also contributes to women's general better access to health. The goal of PARTAGE study was to evaluate the level and determinants of adherence to a prenatal prevention consultation dedicated to men.

Methods: Between January 2021 and April 2022, we conducted a monocentric interventional study in Montreuil hospital. We assessed the acceptance of a prenatal prevention consultation newly offered to every future father, through their pregnant partner's prior consent to provide their contact details.

Results: Three thousand thirty-eight women provided contact information used to reach the fathers; effective contact was established with 2,516 men, of whom 1,333 (53%) came for prenatal prevention consultation. Immigrant men were more likely to come than French-born men (56% versus 49%, p < 0·001), and the more they faced social hardship, the more likely they were to accept the offer. In multivariate analysis, men born in Subsaharan Africa and Asia were twice as likely to attend the consultation as those born in Europe or North America.

Conclusion: Acceptance of this new offer was high. Moreover, this consultation was perceived by vulnerable immigrant men as an opportunity to integrate a healthcare system they would have otherwise remained deprived of.

Trial registration: Registry: ClinicalTrials.gov, US National Library of Medicine https://classic.

Clinicaltrials: gov/ct2/show/NCT05085717 Clinical Trial number: NCT05085717 . Date of registration: 20/10/2021.

Keywords: Gender inequalities; HIV; Health insurance coverage; Migrants health; Prenatal health; Sexually transmitted infections; Social inequalities in health; Vaccination.

Fig. 1

Study flow chart, Montreuil (France) 2021–2022

Fig. 2

Women’s and men’s characteristics associated with men’s acceptance of Father’s Prenatal Prevention Consultation (FPPC), Montreuil (France), 2021–2022^{1 1}Reference groups in graph a are: France for region of birth, secondary school for education level, couple with children for parity, non precarious job for employment; graph b: France for region of birth, secondary school for education level, <30 for age, any job for employment, couple with children for parity, >= 4 years for union’s duration; graph c: Europe/North America/Australia for region of birth, secondary school for education level, >= 7 years for length of stay, study/join someone for main reason for coming to France, regular situation for administrative status, personal house for housing conditions, couple with children for parity; graph d: Europe/North America for region of birth, secondary school for education level, >= 7 years for length of stay, regular situation for administrative status, couple with children for parity. For logistic regressions, see Additional file 3