Research projects

EMBARC: Equitable Maternal care and Birth through Anti-Racist Coproduction

Racial inequalities in maternal care are persistent and a breach towards achieving equitable care. Notwithstanding the multifaceted factors contributing to these inequalities, racism and racialisation in maternal care constitute one of the main underexplored factors that should be further explored.

Description

The overarching aim of the project is to identify processes of racialisation in Swedish and British maternal care. We want to understand how structural racism manifests itself in maternal care and its effect on the access to and quality of care. We strive to generate new knowledge about racism by conducting research together with racialised minoritised women, health care providers, and other actors. By racialisation, we mean an ongoing process where certain groups of people are constructed as inferior (racialised minoritised) and subjected to racism and dominance.

The project will be carried out in Sweden and the United Kingdom and consists of two parts that run in parallel; an ethnographic study and a co-creation part. The ethnographic study consists of a questionnaire with open questions, observational studies, and individual interviews. The questionnaire will be available online and can be filled in by anyone who wants to contribute with their personal experiences of racism within maternal care in writing. The observations will be carried out by project members through visits to various maternal care units, and community settings to examine care situations and interactions between health care providers and patients. Individual interviews with racialised minoritised women and providers will be conducted to capture different experiences of and views on racism in different socioeconomic contexts and by different racialised groups in different parts of the country.

As part of the co-creation, we have put together a working group consisting of racialised minoritised women, health care providers, and relevant stakeholders from both countries. The group will help project members with recruiting participants, act as gatekeepers and key informants, initiate discussions about racism and racialisation within maternal care, and co-create tailored anti-racist tools and guidelines to improve organisational routines within maternal care.

If you have further inquiries on the project, please don’t hesitate to email us at: embarc@du.se 

Feel free to follow the project on Instagram: embarc.project

Financiers

Project overview
Project Leader
Project period
2024-01-01 — 2026-12-31
Project status
Ongoing
Members