Kudos for Information on Healthy Pregnancy

Two cheers for Shari Roan (“Head Start on a Healthy Pregnancy,” Oct. 13). She provided a solid account of the increasing awareness of the need to pay attention to personal health before attempting pregnancy.

Roan would have won my third cheer if she had credited the United States Public Health Service recommendations, published in 1989 (“Caring for Our Future: the Content of Prenatal Care”), urging all women and men of reproductive age and capacity to have an annual preventive health appraisal focused on alcohol, other drugs and sexually transmitted infections.

DR. ROBERT HURD SETTLAGE

Professor of Clinical Obstetrics, Gynecology and Family Medicine USC School of Medicine