I was a recipient of the Midwives Award in 2022, for support with my PhD training. The funding award contributed to my second year PhD fees.
Receiving the award has been a great help for supporting me with my ongoing PhD, titled “CONNECT - COmmunity based maternity care for women liviNg in areas of ethNic divErsity and soCial disadvanTage: an intersectional approach “, whereby I am researching ethnically and socially diverse women’s experiences of receiving an enhanced place-based continuity of care model.
The research project is a qualitative longtitudinal design, whereby women who have used the enhanced midwifery model are interviewed at three different timepoints: first in their third-trimester, secondly 0-3 months postpartum and lastly 9-12 months postpartum. Using and applying an intersectional framework to this piece of research, and I would argue to all healthcare research, is extremely important to understand peoples' multiple compounding social identities, to truly understand what health services do well and what needs to be improved in order to meet their specific local population needs.
This project will benefit the community receiving this model of care, but also similarly disadvantaged communities that experience inequalities in health based on their ethnicity and social background, if scaled-up and implemented nationally.
This project will benefit midwives and stakeholders by considering their experiences of offering such a model of care. It is important to recognise their experiences to help inform future implementation that is also sustainable by the workforce.
The PhD project is ongoing with an aim to complete and publish the work by 2024. I would like to thank the Iolanthe Trust for supporting midwife researchers like myself in order to strengthen their ongoing professional development. I would also like to thank my supervisors Prof Jane Sandall, Prof Seeromanie Harding, Dr Cristina Fernandez-Turienzo and Dr Hannah Rayment-Jones.
