Abstract

Field and objective: gestational diabetes refers to a condition in which the level of blood glucose increases during pregnancy and symptoms of diabetes are seen in pregnant women who have already been diagnosed with diabetes. Women are quite vulnerable to diabetes due to their special physical, mental, behavioral and physiological characteristics. The present study has aimed to examine the effect of diabetes prevention education programs using focused group discussions on pregnant women who had visited the health care centers of Bordsir city in 2016. Materials and methods: this study is a semi-experimental research with one pre-intervention and post-intervention group. The statistical population of this study is composed of pregnant women covered by Bardsir health centers. The research sample consists of 40 pregnant women who had visited these health centers who were qualified to participate in the study. The tools used in this study were a checklist and maternal demographic characteristics questionnaire. Firstly, the required data was collected using the aforementioned questionnaire and checklist. The experimental intervention was developed for mothers during 6 sessions using the group discussion method. Then, after 2 months, the data were gathered once again using the checklist and then they were compared with the data gathered before the intervention. Data analysis was done using the SPSS ver. 20 and descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and frequency as well as inferential statistics including statistical tests such as paired t-test, independent t-test and ANOVA. The significance level in this research was P<0.05. Findings: age mean of the pregnant women under study was 27.77 years with the standard deviation of 8.58 years. 87.5 of these women were housewives and the academic level of 55 of these women was lower than a high school diploma. According to the post-intervention results, the mean blood sugar of the pregnant women diagnosed with gestational diabetes was significantly reduced (P<0.001). Conclusion: according to the results of this study, mothers' participation in physical activity training programs using focused group discussions on the reduction of the fasting blood sugar level of pregnant women is quite effective on the obtained results. Thus, educating the mothers and making them more aware using focused group discussions is recommended as a good strategy for reducing the fasting blood sugar level of pregnant women diagnosed with gestational diabetes.