Dr Abimbola Ayorinde, Assistant Professor in our Public Health Theme at Warwick Medical School, recently made headlines for her work on ethnic health inequalities in maternal and neonatal health.

The NHS Race and Health Observatory reportLink opens in a new window describes how few maternal policies have been developed by hospital trusts to address ethnic health inequalities across maternity care. Authors identified a lack of a national, central focus; a lack of diversity in research; and a lack of national commitment, which all contribute to this issue. Dr Ayorinde, said: “Ethnic inequalities in maternal and neonatal health is a very important issue. It was disappointing that in over 40 years of published evidence we only found 19 interventions aimed broadly at tackling ethnic inequalities. This suggests paucity of robust evidence as well as lack of clear records of interventions in this area. The report highlights recommendations for various stakeholder groups and we hope that each party would play their part to ensure we achieve the much-needed improvement going forward.”

This work was commissioned in partnership the University of Liverpool.

More information is also available at the RHO press release: http://nhsrho.org/news/new-research-identifies-gaps-in-ethnicity-research-in-maternal-care/Link opens in a new window

This report was also covered in the News section of the BMJ (http://bmj.com/content/379/bmj.o2964Link opens in a new window).

In addition, an explainer video of the key findings can be accessed at: https://youtu.be/FPkdEnObgZsLink opens in a new window.

Further, ARC WM is now involved in further work specifically focussing on identifying interventions to improve communication with ethnic minority pregnant peopleLink opens in a new window. There are language and communication barriers in maternity care that affect inequalities in health and we aim to identify what has been done to address these. The work is being conducted with London School of Economics and funded by NHS Race and Health Observatory.