The healthcare needs of migrant women have been a growing area of concern in Norway and internationally. Issues of interest have focused on persisting inequities in the health outcomes for pregnant women and their babies despite universal access to free public maternity services.
Closing the Gaps in Maternity Care to Migrant Women in Norway (the MIPREG Study) seeks to: 1) Determine the current gaps in maternity care delivery to pregnant migrant women; 2) Develop and pilot interventions to fill present gaps in antenatal and delivery care; and 3) Ultimately improve health outcomes among pregnant migrant women.
The MIPREG project will target migrant, or minority, women of reproductive age (15-49 years) with maternal country of birth outside the OECD and less than 5 years of stay in Norway. It will address both preventive and treatment aspects of maternal health complications. The primary objective is to identify the health-care related factors that contribute to inequity in maternity outcomes among recent migrant women, and address these factors to ultimately improve health outcomes. Secondary objectives are to determine disparities in pregnancy outcomes according to migration status; map current maternity service challenges; measure Migrant Friendly Maternity Care and finally design and pilot a Migrant Friendly Maternity Care Package.
The health system implementation and participation processes will be analysed following the principles of complex public health interventions and will be grounded in linked registry studies where health outcomes will be a composite of maternal and perinatal morbidity based on agreed outcomes; a Migrant Friendly Maternity Questionnaire where the MFMCQ-responses will be compared with MFMCQ results from Canada and Australia. Healthcare outcomes will be a composite of markers of inadequate prenatal care based
on commonly used prenatal care utilization indices; Process evaluation of the pilot maternity package interventions will consist of data on level of implementation.
The MIPREG Project brings together a unique multidisciplinary team of researchers with wide experience within the field of maternal health and migration. The researchers have backgrounds in obstetrics and gynaecology, epidemiology, midwifery, medical anthropology and health systems’ research.
Project Group:
- Ingvil Krarup Sørbye (PI), Norwegian National Advisory Unit for Women’s Health, Oslo University Hospital
- Prof. Johanne Sundby, University of Oslo
- Prof. Siri Vangen, Norwegian National Advisory Unit for Women’s Health, Oslo University Hospital
- Associate professor Benedikte V. Lindskog, University of Oslo
Partners:
- Prof. Anne Karen Jenum,University of Oslo Alna Municipality Departments of Obstetrics OUS (Ullevål and Rikshospitalet) and AHUS.
- The Equity and Diversity Unit and Departments for Interpretation Services at Oslo University Hospital and AHUS.
- Professor Rhonda Small
- Assistant professor Sarah Villadsen
- Dr. Esperanza Diaz, NAKMI, Folkehelseinstituttet
- Dr Viva Combs Thorsen, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, USA