Maternal health care for refugee women: qualitative evidence synthesis
Citation: Kasper A, Mohwinkel LM, Nowak AC, et al. Maternal health care for refugee women – A qualitative review. Midwifery. 2022;104:103157.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: Ministry for Culture and Science of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
What is this? Maternal health care should consider the psychosocial needs of women through pregnancy and after childbirth. This is particularly important for refugee women whose psychological and social burdens might be heightened.
In this qualitative review, the authors searched for studies of maternal healthcare delivery for refugee and migrant women after resettlement in high-income countries. They restricted their searches to articles published in English or German between 1990 and 2019 and did the most recent search in October 2019. They included 16 studies, which were from Australia (2 studies), Canada (2), Ireland (2), Sweden (1), Switzerland (1) and UK (8).
What was found: Barriers to the provision of maternal health care for refugee and migrant women include: 1) inaccessibility within health services (making it difficult for women to find their way around the health system of the host country), 2) communication difficulties between healthcare professionals and refugee and migrant women and 3) lack of diversity in health settings.
One solution to communication difficulties might be to have interpreters available in health settings and to use non-verbal communication methods.
Implications: The authors concluded that initiating and enhancing public health activities such as training courses for healthcare professionals that convey general principles such as woman-centered care or communication techniques are valuable opportunities to improve maternal health care for asylum seekers and migrants.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence, ethnicity, culture, language, occupation, gender, sex, education, social capital and age.
This summary was prepared by Yasmeen Saeed and finalized by Mike Clarke.