Abstract

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), certain adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth, low birth weight (LBW) and caesarean section (CS) present major public health problems due to their adverse effects on maternal and child health, (i.e. poor child feeding practices, increasing perinatal mortality, child morbidity and mortality).
The aim of the current work is to assess the impact of sociodemographic factors, prenatal factors and adverse pregnancy outcomes on child feeding practices and child health. The current work created an integrated maternal and child health theoretical framework aiming to improve maternal and child health. The newly-created framework is based on a thorough understanding of the existing knowledge and gaps about the main current work aim through critically reviewing the literature, including the author’s prior publications (9 papers), as well as existing relevant frameworks. The significance of the newly-created framework arises from the author’s prior work, creating new meaning by combining and discussing the findings from the author’s published work with existing literature and comparing the findings between the studied settings (Sudan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)), transforming the existing related frameworks forward, and addressing the social determinants of health (SDH)that can help decision makers to prioritise actions for improving maternal and child health as well as the generalizability of the findings through the application of the newly-created framework in different settings.
The newly-created theoretical framework identifies particular sociodemographic factors, (i.e. nationality, residence, parental education, socioeconomic status (SES), maternal age, obesity
and child gender); particular prenatal factors, (i.e. prenatal care, maternal illness, birth order, and breastfeeding education) as the main predictors of adverse pregnancy outcomes, child feeding practices, perinatal and child health.
In conclusion, the current work addresses all these predictors and outcomes as well as their implications on public health and future research. Also, the current work provides recommendations for decision makers and researchers. Therefore, the current work significantly contributes to the knowledge by creating an integrated maternal and child health theoretical framework. Taking the wider scope of generalizability of the created framework into account, application of the current work findings will lead to improvements in maternal and child health in the studied settings and beyond settings.