Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Severe maternal morbidity (SMM) refers to a set of serious complications during pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and the postpartum period that can lead to severe illness, prolonged hospital stays, long-term disability, or death. SMM has a significant impact on individuals, families, and communities, and this adverse outcome must be prevented. People living in rural areas face a higher risk of SMM, in part due to systemic barriers in access to healthcare. Therefore, there is a need for resources to support high-quality pregnancy care in rural areas. Pregnancy-adapted Early Response Systems (PERS) are clinical tools based on evidence that can help healthcare providers quickly identify and respond to high-risk conditions in pregnancy (e.g., serious infections, high blood pressure, and heavy bleeding), which are major causes of SMM. PERS can reduce SMM by up to 20%. Our goal is to create tools to help implement PERS protocols in rural, remote, and community-based settings. These tools will be developed with input from persons with lived experience of pregnancy experience, healthcare providers, and researchers to reduce health disparities and improve healthcare experiences. Using a Human-Centered Design approach, we will develop: 1.Updated PERS protocols and supportive visual resources tailored to rural and remote settings, which healthcare teams will be able to adapt to their specific needs. 2.Instruction guides in the form of "clinical service maps" to guide the implementation of PERS protocols in these areas. We have assembled a diverse and interdisciplinary team from multiple provinces with the skills and expertise needed for this project. In summary, our project aiming to facilitate the implementation of PERS protocols in rural settings, will contribute to reducing inequalities in pregnancy-related health issues and improve the health and well-being of families in Canada.