The 2nd National Summit on Preconception Health and Health Care will be held in Oakland, California on Monday through Wednesday October 29 to 31, 2007.  The Summit is being planned and hosted by the Preconception Care Council of California, March of Dimes California Chapter, the California Department of Health Services, Sutter Health, Kaiser Permanente, the University of California at Berkeley, the Alameda County Healthy Start Program and the Los Angeles County Preconception Health Collaborative in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the CDC Preconception Care Initiative steering committee, which includes representatives from CDC, HRSA, the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP), CityMatCH, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the March of Dimes.

The program organizers are seeking abstracts for consideration for oral or poster presentations during the conference as well as proposals for special sessions including case studies.  Accepted abstracts will be published in the workshop program booklet and may be used as a basis for solicited submissions for a special journal supplement following the Summit.

Abstracts are being solicited in the following areas related to preconception health and health care:

1. Strategies and tools for integrating preconception care into clinical practice
2. Evidence-based practices for incorporating preconception care into women’s primary care and family planning visits
3. Promising practices from local public health departments and local communities for integrating preconception health into MCH and broader public health services and systems
4. Research on preconception health promotion and education
5. Strategies and tools for outreach to consumers on preconception health and health care
6. Lessons from interconception care efforts in Healthy Start
7. Approaches for reaching underserved and hard to reach women of reproductive age
8. State-level approaches for integrating preconception health into Title V MCH, family planning, WIC, and other public health services and systems.
9. Medicaid and other public and private finance strategies to support and sustain preconception health and healthcare
10. Other state and local efforts to improve preconception health and health care

Papers with new findings and those which reflect the themes listed above will be given highest priority.  However, the organizers encourage the submission of abstracts dealing with other preconception health and health care issues.  Provocative conceptual and methodologic papers which are deemed by reviewers to contribute to an improved understanding of prevention strategies will also be considered. All abstracts will be peer reviewed. Abstracts are more likely to be accepted if the methods are clear, the results are specific, and the work has practical implications. Most authors will be given 15 minutes for the presentation of accepted papers. 

ATTENTION: The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to June 20, 2007. 

To submit an abstract for an oral/poster presentation or a special session, click here.