Objective  To analyze the timeliness for the release of maternal health information in Beijing and Shanghai and to explore the feasibility of quantifying publishing timeliness of maternal health information.

  Methods  We systematically collected all reports and research literatures on health care needs of the women in Beijing and Shanghai published by governmental agencies and professional institutions and quantitatively assessed the timeliness of the information publishing based on the gap between the time of drawing an attention by World Health Organization and the time of publishing information firstly to a specific maternal health issue. We adopted Spearman correlation and linear regression analysis to evaluate the relationship between the information publishing timeliness and maternal mortality.

  Results  The ratio of the maternal health information published timely by governmental agencies and professional institutions in Beijing and Shanghai were 76.8% and 80.3% in 2017 and 83.3% of the published information were updated timely. From 2000 to 2017, the overall timeliness ratio increased from 49.5% to 80.1% for the published healthcare information on the pregnant women in Beijing and from 74.2% to 81.8% for the published information on the pregnant women in Shanghai. The overall timeliness ratio for published information on health care of the pregnant women in Beijing and Shanghai was significantly correlated inversely with the maternal mortality of the women in the two cities, with the correlation coefficients of – 0.530 and – 0.599 (both P < 0.05) and 27.6% and 38.7% of the variation in the maternal mortality could be interpretated by the variation in the overall timeliness ratio for the two cities.

  Conclusion  The timeliness for the release of maternal health information by governmental agencies and professional institutions in Beijing and Shanghai gradually increased during the period from 2000 to 2017 but the timeliness still needs to be improved. The method for quantitative evaluation on publishing timeliness of the information on maternal health care needs is feasible and could be applied in other researches.