Research


MAMAACT is a complex intervention aimed at reduced ethnic and social inequity in reproductive health. The project focuses on improving the communication about pregnancy complications between pregnant women and their midwives to ensure optimal response to pregnancy complications from both parties. The intervention consists of post graduate training of midwives in intercultural communication and a smart phone application and a leaflet, both in six different languages. The app and leaflet explain the most serious pregnancy complication warning signs and how the women should respond to them. It is our expectation that these initiatives together will promote both communication between the pregnant women and their midwives as well as the pregnant women’s ability to articulate symptoms and to navigate the health care system. This should ensure optimal and timely response to warning signs in pregnancy from both the women and the health system. Additionally, it will increase health among newborns and in the long term reduce infant mortality and stillbirths.

MAMAACT is implemented and evaluated in a randomized controlled trial and 10 maternity wards will receive the intervention, while nine maternity wards are included as control groups. The project is implemented at maternity ward level, and all pregnant women are included irrespective of their ethnic origin as the project can have beneficial effects among all pregnant women. The primary outcome of the project is that the health literacy of non-Western immigrant women’s will increase to the level that the ethnic Danish women possessed in the beginning of the project. This will be investigated through surveys. The secondary outcome is that the project promotes health at birth, which will be investigated through a registry study.

A further important focus in the evaluation is how the midwives and the pregnant non-Western immigrant women experience working with MAMAACT. Both barriers at the organizational level at the maternity wards as well as in the women’s everyday life will be analyzed. The data will be collected through interviews, focus groups and observations. In addition, data concerning the maternity wards’ organizational context, the number of pregnant women attending in the maternity wards and distributed leaflets and app downloads will be collected.

The evaluation of MAMAACT is divided into two PhD projects using quantitative and qualitative methods, respectively which subsequently will be combined in an integrated analysis of the project’s mechanisms and effects.