Abstract:

In this seventh webinar from the KCL Midwifery and Maternal Health Research Group we are delighted to host two PhD candidates from the group sharing insights from their work focusing on the important issue of increasing midwifery coverage in India and Ghana.

Sangy Manjini Anandaraj will be sharing insights from her completed mixed-methods study exploring the attitudes and beliefs of women regarding the implementation of midwife-led care in India. Mary Edu-Mensah will be sharing insights from her current study using a co-design process to develop interventions to improve skilled birth attendance in the Nkwanta North District of Ghana.

This event will be of interest to maternity professionals, academics, birth workers and service users. We will also allocate time for Q&A.

Please note this will be recorded and sent out after the event - so do sign up if you just wish to receive the recording.

About Sangy Manjini Anandaraj

Sangy is a Research Fellow at the Maternal and Child Health Research Centre, University of Bedfordshire. With a Master’s and PhD from King’s College London, her doctoral research focused on midwife-led care in India. She is a trained nurse specialising in maternal health from India and later became a registered midwife with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), UK. Sangy has experience in both academic and clinical roles in India and Oman. Her interests lie in advancing midwifery research to enhance the health of women and newborns.

About Mary Edu-Mensah

Mary Edu-Mensah is a PhD student at King’s College London, specialising in maternal and newborn health. Her doctoral research involves co-designing and implementing community-driven interventions to promote skilled birth care in Ghana. By collaborating with local stakeholders, Mary aims to address barriers to maternal health and improve outcomes through culturally tailored and scalable solutions. Her work seeks to contribute evidence-based strategies to global maternal health initiatives.

About Midwifery and Maternity Health Research Group

The Midwifery & Maternal Health Research Group is developing a programme of high-quality research to foster improvements to the delivery, outcomes and experiences of maternity care services. Our research is underpinned by the Lancet’s Midwifery framework for quality maternal and newborn care (QMNC). The QMNC is based on a definition of midwifery which encompasses skills, attitudes and behaviours, rather than specific professional roles. Therefore, while rooted in midwifery practice, our work goes beyond professional boundaries to centre childbearing women, people and their families.

Staff work within the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, in close collaboration with the Life Course Sciences Women & Children’s Health Department. We are also forging research networks and collaborations with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience and Philosophy & Medicine. Additionally, the team bring their existing wider networks, service-user and clinician partnerships and collaborations that will develop and enhance the research profile.

We bring together our diverse but inter-related fields of interest. These have previously included modifiable risk factors for stillbirth, maternity care experiences for those who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, midwifery practices in facilitating complex physiological birth and improving maternity care for women with pre-existing medical conditions. Together, our work will continue to consider the outcomes and experiences of those receiving care, and those delivering care to address some of the key issues facing maternity services today.