Racialised Women's Access to Midwife Led Birth Settings. Scoping Review Protocol.

  

Racialised women and their babies have worse perinatal outcomes (NPEU, 2020) and worse experiences of maternity care than white women in the UK (Peter and Wheeler, 2022, Birthrights, 2022, Gohir, 2022). It is well known that midwife-led birth settings (MLBS) have comparable or improved clinical outcomes (Scarf et al., 2018), higher level of maternal satisfaction (Hodnett et al., 2010), and can offer woman-centred, culturally safe care (Rogers et al., 2020) when compared to obstetric-led care settings. MLBS could improve both outcomes and experience for racialised women by offering personalised , culturally appropriate and respectful care. This scoping review will investigate facilitators and barriers to access to MLBS for racialised women in the UK and any successful interventions aimed at facilitating access.

  

What this review will add

In order to deliver equitable care and improve outcomes for racialised women it is imperative to ask: what strategies and best practice facilitate access to MLBS for low-risk racialised women? To date there is no comprehensive research about barriers and facilitators for access to MLBS for racialised women. This is the first study to explore that question directly and offer insights for strategies for improvement of access.

Review question

What good practice, barriers or rationale have been documented regarding strategies for enabling and facilitating access to midwife-led birth settings for racialised women in the UK?