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Help us improve research into pregnancy and maternity care

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Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

We recently announced a new project to prepare for adding the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS) to OpenSAFELY. This data would help researchers answer important questions such as, are women with certain conditions more likely to have a complicated delivery, is maternity care delivered differently in different areas of the country or to different people, or are there links between certain conditions occurring in pregnancy and outcomes later in a child’s life. We want to answer research questions that are important to women, so we’re very keen to find people with lived experience who want to be part of a Public Advisory Group to support this work.

We want to understand what matters most in terms of the experience for people going through pregnancy and maternity care. By working together and understanding lived experiences, we will design our research to create meaningful improvements to people’s care. This group will help inform future research in this area and by working alongside the project team, your involvement can support future decisions about pregnancy and maternity care.

We want to find answers to questions like:

  • What are meaningful outcomes to you as a service user?
  • What areas of pregnancy and maternity care should be researched?

Together we will create a network of public advisors and researchers interested in the role research supports improvements to the quality of pregnancy and maternity care in England. This is a year-long project, funded by a Programme Development Grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

You could be one of our advisors

  • It’s a small commitment - we are looking for people to commit to four 1.5 hour meetings between March and June 2025, with the first meeting to take place on 27th March 2025. There is the possibility of additional remote review tasks during the project(up to around 1 - 2 hours over and above the four meetings). The project is due to end in November 2025.
  • We might ask you to read some documents before or after some of the meetings, but they won’t be very long or technical.
  • All our meetings will happen online, so you won’t have to travel anywhere.
  • We’ll pay £25/hour for your time - this will involve joining online meetings and reading materials.
  • In return, you’ll be helping us make sure that the research we’re doing reflects the experiences and perspectives of real people.
  • We will also ask if you are interested in contributing on an ongoing basis in future work

We want a good mix of people

To be part of this we are looking for:

  • People with direct first-hand experience of pregnancy and maternity care in the NHS in England in the last three years.
  • People who have regular contact with groups to their feedback/experiences regarding maternity services, or that you personally identify with.
  • This can be any pregnancy experience and it is not restricted to people who had a live birth or full pregnancy.

We would like to work with people of all different ages, locations and backgrounds. In particular, we would like to hear from people from groups who have been historically underrepresented in research design, such as those with disabilities, in minority groups, migrants etc. If you are part of one of these groups and would like to discuss how we can support your involvement please do get in touch.

You don’t have to have any specialist medical or technical knowledge. We’ll guide you through the process. We’re looking for experiences, not expertise.

How to take part

  • Fill in this online form: https://forms.office.com/e/U2s2ka08uX
  • It is short, and will help us understand a bit about you and your interest in being an advisor
  • We’ll be in touch if your application is successful

Please be aware we will need to limit the number of attendees in order to ensure all who take part have the opportunity to participate. As a result, we ask that you complete this expression of interest form so we can try to invite a diverse group who can speak to the experiences and views of a range of different groups and demographics.

We will close the expression of interest window by the 6th March 2025.

If you would like to speak to a member of the team to find out a bit more before filling out the form, please drop us an email on bennett@phc.ox.ac.uk.

Background and Supporting Information

What is the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science?

The Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science is a research group in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. We take huge datasets and turn them into traditional academic research papers. We also build live, interactive data-driven tools and services for everyone to use. One of these tools is OpenSAFELY, a secure, transparent, open-source software platform for analysis of electronic health records data.

What type of research do we do?

The type of research we do is using data gathered during healthcare visits and regular NHS care to answer important questions. These questions may be to help us understand how disease works during pregnancy, to improve the way the NHS delivers care to pregnant women, or to understand more about which factors might contribute to an unwanted outcome during pregnancy. By looking at what has happened in health data we can understand more about how things work and, crucially, how to improve things. This isn’t research that involves clinical trials.

Meet the project team