Preconception care is the provision of biomedical, behavioural and social health interventions to women and couples before conception occurs. It aims at improving their health status, and reducing behaviours and individual and environmental factors that contribute to poor maternal and child health outcomes. Its ultimate aim is to improve maternal and child health, in both the short and long term.
Opportunities to prevent and control diseases occur at multiple stages of life; strong public health programmes that use a life-course perspective from infancy through childhood and adolescence to adulthood are needed. Preconception care contributes to these efforts. Even if preconception care aims primarily at improving maternal and child health, it brings health benefits to the adolescents, women and men, irrespective of their plans to become parents
