Researchers receive $840,000 to establish virtual hub focused on improving pregnancy care

Isabelle Malhamé (McGill University) and Rohan D’Souza (McMaster University) – in collaboration with the Canadian Perinatal Programs Coalition – have received nearly $840,000 from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) to establish a virtual hub focused on improving pregnancy and post-partum healthcare.

CIHR and WAGE have invested $8.3M to support the creation of a Pan-Canadian Women’s Health Coalition, with the goal of maximizing the visibility and impact of women’s health research and practice in Canada, grounded in the principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, and Indigenous Rights.

The Coalition is comprised of 10 virtual hubs across Canada that will eventually be linked through an overarching coordinating centre.

Malhamé and D’Souza’s Hub will focus on co-creating knowledge mobilization activities with communities across Canada to address pregnancy-related deaths and near-miss events, also known as severe maternal morbidity (SMM) – unexpected pregnancy outcomes that result in severe illness and are, in most cases, preventable.

“The Hub will bring together several key and often underrepresented groups across Canada, including racialized, gender-diverse and Indigenous health service users, clinicians, policy makers, researchers and persons with lived experience of pregnancy,” says Malhamé, an assistant professor of medicine at McGill and physician at the McGill University Health Centre.

“We are looking forward to working in partnership with communities to co-develop knowledge mobilization activities that can help prevent severe maternal morbidity, make pregnancies safer and improve the quality of pregnancy and postpartum care.”

The Hub will develop materials to support the review and analysis of SMM events in Canada. It will also explore potential ways to improve pregnancy care by integrating new protocols and care practices that are person-centred, gender sensitive, culturally appropriate and evidence-informed into existing models of care.

“Individuals from historically marginalized communities are often disproportionately affected by severe maternal morbidity,” says D’Souza, associate professor in the department of obstetrics & gynecology at McMaster.

“By partnering with these communities, we aim to address critical knowledge gaps in existing SMM research and work together to develop pregnancy care practices that reflect the diverse needs of Canadians.”

The Canadian Perinatal Programs Coalition says the Hub will be an innovative and much-needed resource that will help providers prevent and reduce maternal deaths and long-term impacts of adverse events across Canada.

“We commit to supporting the spread of the Hub’s work through our national network of maternal, perinatal, and reproductive care programs and associations,” they say.

Students from the University of Calgary’s Patient and Community Engagement Research (PaCER) program will participate in the Hub, providing expertise in qualitative research and leading patient centred SMM studies while gaining valuable first-hand experience in the health research field.