[Optimize maternal and neonatal health from health education. Literature review.]

Objective: Pregnancy is an event in a woman's life with enormous potential to affect her health and the newborn health. The objective of this review was to study the contributions made by the different investigations on nutrition and physical activity (PA) in relation to obstetric and perinatal outcomes, as well as health status in adulthood from 2011 to 2021.

Methods: An exploratory review of the literature was carried out. Two blind reviewers performed the search, screening and inclusion of the articles (37).

Results: Bibliographic reviews (35.13%) and descriptive studies (21.6%) were collected. The extracted information was grouped into three thematic areas: health education (HE) (16 articles), diet (12 articles), physical activity (9 articles) and 4 sub-themes: macronutrients; micronutrients; type of exercise and intensity and frequency of exercise. The most reported obstetric and perinatal outcomes were premature birth (37.5%), fetal growth disturbance (37.5%) and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) (25%).

Conclusions: Results are in line with the published literature. Diet and PA play a relevant role in obstetric and perinatal outcomes, as well as in health status in adulthood. However, it's not clear which is the best educational intervention to improve adherence to a healthy lifestyle during and after pregnancy. This review may have incurred several biases including publication bias and selection bias. Future research on HE in pregnancy should adopt an approach focused on educational interventions that achieve greater adherence to a healthy lifestyle.