Let's be real, sometimes championing preconception health and wellness feels like pushing a boulder up a hill. After all, we are trying to shift a paradigm. As such, it is always exciting to see mainstream media covering the importance of preconception health. Three excellent articles were just published in The Lancet, one of the globe's most respected medical journals, about preconception health. Access and read the articles here(1), here(2), and here(3). The papers make a clear, scientific case for the necessity of improving preconception health for women and men. Across the three manuscripts, the authors center their arguments for preconception health in low, middle and high income countries on life course theory and research.

Largely from the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands, the authors' perspective underscores our own, that "interventions to improve women's nutritional status and health behaviours at all preconception action phases should consider social and environmental determinants, to avoid exacerbating health and gender inequalities, and be underpinned by a social movement that touches the whole population." (Barker et al., Paper 3) The authors underscore that preconception interventions must be supported by "political will which requires skillful engagement with powerful commercial interests."  

CNN picked up coverage of these articles with an interesting article that highlighted men's role in preconception wellness and the way that women's and men's health can have a profound impact on their future offspring. Time is short and everyone is busy, but we'd recommend at least reading the key messages for each of the papers and starting a conversation at work. For example, a robust lunch time conversation could follow on the heels of Stephenson, et al., who suggest that "identification of people contemplating pregnancy provides a window of opp ortunity to improve health before conception, while population-level initiatives to reduce the determinants of preconception risks, such as obesity and smoking, irrespective of pregnancy planning, are essential to improve outcomes." (Paper 1).