The health impact of Scotland's Baby Box Scheme: a natural experiment evaluation using national linked health data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Scotland's Baby Box Scheme (SBBS) is a national programme offering a box of essential items to all pregnant women in Scotland intended to improve infant and maternal health. We aimed to evaluate the effect of SBBS on selected infant and maternal health outcomes at population and subgroup levels (maternal age and area deprivation).

Methods

Our complete-case, intention-to-treat evaluation used national health data (from the Scottish Morbidity Record [SMR] 01, SMR02, and the Child Health Surveillance Programme-Pre School), linking birth records to postnatal hospitalisation and universal health visitor records in Scotland. We considered maternal-infant pairs of all live-singleton births 2 years either side of SBBS introduction (Aug 17, 2015, to Aug 11, 2019). We estim

SUBMITTER: McCabe R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10323308 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature