Maternity Support Survey in the US and Canada

Who We Are & What We're Doing

• We are a group of researchers interested in how doulas, childbirth educators, and labor & delivery nurses in the US and Canada view recent trends in childbirth practices and outcomes, and each other.

• We knew we could do better research as a group than we could individually, so we have been meeting for the past two years via conference call; contributing equally to the survey development and are about ready to launch!

• Several membership organizations for doulas, childbirth educators, and labor & delivery nurses in the US and Canada have agreed to help us recruit participants to our survey by sending emails to their members.

What We Need & What You Get

• We are on a bare bones research budget - the graduate students will use the data for their dissertation research; and we need $3000 to cover our immediate costs for the online survey, our website domain registration, and organizational fees to access members. 

• Depending on the level of support, you'll get our most sincere thanks, acknowledgement on our website, advance copy of research summary, teleconference with research team or written acknowledgement on all publications.
  
  
• If we EXCEED our goal, we can afford to pay our grad students for data analysis.  If we don't meet our goal, we can still use funds to cover our expenses.

The Impact

• We care about maternity outcomes and believe our research will contribute to our understanding of how maternity support workers can help improve care to women and newborns.
• The co-investigators have successfully conducted research projects on maternity topics.  Louise Roth is also doing research on how malpractice and the health insurance system influence maternity care, including the rate of cesarean delivery. Christine Morton is interviewing women, their partners and providers on traumatic childbirth experiences.
• The graduate students are doing dissertation work on emotional burnout, doula work as a career, breastfeeding support and documentation routines.  This project will make huge contributions to the nursing and childbirth literature.

Other Ways You Can Help

We hope those of you doing maternity support work, or who have benefitted from having a great doula, childbirth educator or labor & delivery nurse will consider supporting much needed research on these critical, yet overlooked roles in maternity care.

If you can't afford to help us with a monetary contribution, please share this link far and wide among your social networks, and using the Indiegogo share tools is a great way to do this.