Grant: Planning Grants

Health practitioners are located at the nexus of diverse perspectives on fear and risk and have to navigate challenging terrain in meeting the need of mothers, children and the health care system. Exploring this diversity in risk calculation presents an opportunity to develop a robust and conscious set of strategies for health carers to respond practically to pregnancy and birthing needs but in a way that might reduce the high incidence and associated implications of caesarean section rates in Canada. We propose to gather together a research team composed of birthing women, practitioner, stakeholder and academic members of relevant expert and women's knowledge communities that will work together to create a community-based research program with the objective of gaining a fuller understanding of the complexities of the decision-making contexts in which decisions are made to surgically intervene in a birth. This project will prioritize the voices of women themselves in recognition that women are active managers of their own health, place this decision-making context within a historical and comparative frame, identify relevant wise practices from Canadian new immigrant, vulnerable women, and Indigenous communities concerning alternative experiences, and help foster the development of pilot intervention programs aimed at reducing caesarean ratse in British Columbia.