Prenatal information is a decisive determinant of health choices made by pregnant women and their partners as they move through the continuum of perinatal services [
1,
2]. Considering the myriad of information sources publicly available and their variable quality [
3‐
7], prenatal education remains a health promotion strategy at the core of perinatal care and services provided by health and social services centers [
8‐
10] [S-10] and is supported by public policies [
10,
11]. Group prenatal education is one of the most common educational models [
12]. Various studies have shown that group prenatal education can be effective in the preparation for labour and delivery, reducing anxiety and maximising partners’ involvement. However, these results depend on the organization, format, and content of the educational services [
13‐
17]. In order to address accessibility issues as well as the evolving needs of future parents, some health and social services centers have opted to recommend or implement online prenatal education, while still offering group prenatal education. Decision makers, however, are concerned about the impacts of this new educational mode on the efficacy of health services networks. In a restructuring context where the deployment of online education opens the door to new complementary prenatal education to group education, it is important to understand the contribution of these two educational modes on health determinants and users’ perinatal health [
18]. Because of the heterogeneity of delivery modes [
9], evidence of prenatal education effectiveness and impact is scarce or contradictory for group prenatal education [
12,
14‐
17,
19] and very limited for online prenatal education [
20‐
22], although online education may address the needs of certain users and improve accessibility [
23‐
29]. Within a health promotion context, prenatal education delivered by health and social services centers could be improved by being integrated into a continuum of perinatal information in partnership with existing community services networks [
30]. Several studies show that networking may contribute to health system effectiveness, but structural characteristics and collaborations with community partners surrounding prenatal education and information remain unknown [
31‐
33]. There is thus an urgent need to collect robust data on the impacts of group prenatal education and online prenatal education, and to consolidate perinatal information networks with community partners.
The aim of this project is to evaluate the impacts of group prenatal education and online prenatal education provided or recommended by health and social services centers on health determinants and users’ health status, as well as on networks of perinatal educational services maintained with community-based partners. Specific objectives are to: 1) document the characteristics of group prenatal education and online prenatal education and contribute to their optimization; 2) evaluate the impacts of group prenatal education and online prenatal education on health determinants and the perinatal health status of parents; 3) evaluate characteristics and collaborations related to perinatal educational services within which group prenatal education and online prenatal education are offered, with community-based partners.