Abstract
BACKGROUND: Maternal and perinatal mortality is highly associated with four or fewer antenatal care (ANC) visit. Due to this, WHO develop a new model called minimum of eight antenatal care (ANC8+) contact. This model is used to re-think and re-design the service through context specific expectations. Besides, the model is beyond survival, aim to maximize health and wellbeing of women even at post pregnancy motherhood, and social health of the family and community at large. Since shortage of related studies in Ethiopia so far, this study aim to address those gaps. OBJECTIVE: To assess intention to use ANC8+ model and associated factors among pregnant women who come for antenatal care contact in Northwest of Amhara region referral hospitals, Ethiopia, 2021. METHOD: An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted from September 1st to October 30th, 2021 in Northwest of Amhara regional state referral hospitals. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 847 eligible women. A structured, pretested, and interviewer-administered questionnaire was employed. EPI data version 4.6 and SPSS version 23 were used for data entry and analysis, respectively. Binary logistic regression model was fitted to identify factors associated with pregnant women intention to use ANC8+ model. A p-value of ≤0.05 was used to declare statistical association in the last model. RESULT: Overall, 739 (88.8 %, 95 % CI: 86.68, 90.97) women had the intention to use ANC8+. Pregnant women in the age group between 20 and 30 years (AOR = 19.84, 95 % CI: 3.01, 130.64), and ≥31 years (AOR = 3.92, 95 % CI: 1.79, 8.58), being farmer in occupation (AOR = 0.13, 95 % CI: 0.04, 0.43), government employee (AOR = 5.58, 95 % CI: 1.64, 18.97), good attitude (AOR = 38.76, CI 5.99, 250.73), positive subjective norm (AOR = 10.83, 95 % CI: 4.36, 26.92) and perceived behavioral control (AOR = 8.98, 95 % CI: 3.26, 24.71) were factors associated with women's intention to use ANC8+. CONCLUSION: More than four-fifths of the pregnant women had intention to use ANC8+. Increase in age, being the government employee, having good attitude, positive subjective norm and perceived behavioral control were positively, while being a farmer negatively associated to intention to use ANC8+ contact. Therefore, empowering women, developing socio cultural integrity with the health system through health education and trainings to local health cadres and community leaders would possibly increase the intention of using ANC8+.