Grant: Project Grant

Canadians experience significant barriers accessing sexual and reproductive healthcare due to geographic and social inequities. This impacts some groups more than others, specifically those who have historically experienced barriers to care, such as Indigenous, young, immigrant, LGBTQI2S, economically disadvantaged, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, uninsured people and rural and remote populations. There is strong, high-quality evidence that midwives could be used to help improve access to sexual and reproductive care for these groups. Our project aims to mobilize evidence to supports both scaling up midwifery services and expanding the services that midwives can offer in Canada in order to better meet population health needs. Our research question is "How can Canada improve equitable access to high-quality sexual and reproductive health care by increasing the contributions of the midwifery work force?" We have three objectives: 1)To identify the needs of knowledge users, and, based on these needs, to develop and share knowledge and tools that will support knowledge users to scale up midwifery services in Canada; 2)To develop an evidence-based framework to guide the successful implementation of expansion of the role that midwives play in sexual and reproductive health care in Canadian health systems; & 3)To broadly engage stakeholders to explore policy options to support an increased role for midwives in sexual and reproductive health care in Canada and catalyze action to better meet population heath needs, particularly for underserved groups. Our project is co-led by one Settler and one Indigenous researcher, and we will partner with key stakeholders to use integrated knowledge translation. Informed by critical theory and anti-oppression theory, we will use participatory action research, critical interpretive synthesis, and deliberative dialogues to conduct our research and co-create new knowledge to expand midwives' contributions in Canada.