Objective To evaluate the improvement of the social environment support for the maternal health care system before and after the initiation of the health strategy in Beijing and Shanghai, and to verify the significance of implementing the strategy.
Methods Totally 649 policy documents on maternal health care issued by administrative agencies of Beijing (232 documents) and Shanghai (417 documents) till 2017 were systematically retrieved. The quantitative indicators for changes in social environment support (including political environment determinant, legal guarantee, economic support, and cultural guidance) to maternal health care performance in the two municipalities before and after the initiation of the health strategy were calculated and compared.
Results After the initiation of the health strategy, the indicators for social environment support to maternal health care performance was increased substantially for both the municipalities (from 29.5% to 52.6% for Beijing and 26.4% to 46.1% for Shanghai); however, there were still potential improvements in the domain indicators for the four dimensions of the social environment support, especially for those of political environment determinant (increased to 30.3% and 29.1% in Beijing and Shanghai) and economic support (increased to 54.8% and 42.1% in Beijing and Shanghai).
Conclusion The initiation of the health priority strategy is critical to improving social environment support for the maternal health care performance and efficient policies related to the strategy needs to be developed and implemented urgently.
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