Speaker

Agnieszka Latuszynska - Assistant Professor, WBS

The value of implementation science: National implementation evaluation of a maternity triage service

Triage systems are designed to ensure patients receive the level and quality of care appropriate to their clinical needs. In the past, there was no such standardised triage system available in maternity care to identify, prioritise and treat women attending maternity services with unscheduled pregnancy related complications or concerns. The need for a nationally standardised maternity triage system has been highlighted in several UK confidential enquiries as well as in many local Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Health Services Safety Investigation Board (HSSIB) reviews.

Aleksandra Byrska - Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant, WMS

Improving IVF Outcomes for Fertility Patients

Since 1978, IVF has allowed birth of over 10 million babies worldwide. However, pregnancy rate per embryo transferred remains capped at just over 30% despite advancements in the field. This is due to inefficiency of human reproduction, with only 30% of spontaneous conceptions resulting in live birth. As every IVF treatment cycle comes with great physical and emotional burden for patients, it is important to improve those odds even further. Our research aims to understand the natural limitations of human fertility and contribute to improving IVF success by studying a known limiting factor: embryonic aneuploidy. Aneuploidy is an abnormal number of chromosomes in a cell, and while common in human embryos, is a major cause of failure in medically assisted reproduction. We use advanced microscopy to observe egg and embryo development and uncover previously unseen events that give rise to aneuploidies.

Vanessa Munro - Professor, School of Law

Holding the State accountable for the health impacts of Violence Against Women and Girls

In this short talk, Vanessa will outline some projects she has been involved in to date which have looked at the impacts of VAWG on victim-survivors’ mental, physical and psychological wellbeing, and explored ways to increase the accountability of the state for preventing and responding to such impacts through mediums including criminal, family and asylum law, as well as public health interventions and educative programmes.

Systems-based Participatory Research to Explore the Integration of Women’s Health & Care (SPHERE)

SPHERE is an upcoming project between collaborators in WBS, WMS, University of Birmingham, and the Coventry & Warwickshire Integrated Care Board. The project aims to explore and synthesize the perspectives of key system stakeholders and women from the community by uncovering the key factors influencing the coordination and continuity of care for women in Coventry & Warwickshire. The findings will be used to inform the strategic planning and implementation of the national Women’s Health Strategy and support the development of impactful co-produced research to improve the integration of women’s health services across the Coventry & Warwickshire Integrated Care System.

Lauren Ewington, Clinical Lecturer, WMS

Managing Pregnancies with Suspected Foetal Macrosomia

A brief overview of the complexities and unknowns.

My PhD is a mixed-methods project which seeks to explore the antenatal and postnatal factors experienced by British Pakistani women (a high-risk group) diagnosed with gestational diabetes that may be contributing towards their future risk of developing type 2 diabetes. I will be exploring their knowledge of gestational diabetes and its management, their engagement with the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme and conducting interviews with this community and healthcare professionals involved in their care to explore the factors underpinning this health inequality, and how it may be addressed.

Maternal health disparities disproportionately affect women from Black, African, Caribbean, and mixed-Black heritage backgrounds as well as those from low-income backgrounds, contributing to poorer pregnancy outcomes. We are working on two projects which tackle these major inequalities. One project explores how to "poverty-proof" maternity care by identifying financial, social, and structural barriers that prevent low-income women from accessing essential services. Through identification of available resources, interviews, surveys, and collaboration with healthcare professionals, the project aims to develop practical solutions to improve care access and health outcomes. The second project examines potential solutions to the racial disparities and whether health and local authority professionals' priorities align with the needs of women from Black, African, Caribbean, and mixed-Black heritage backgrounds in Coventry. Using a structured consensus-building method, it seeks to ensure that minority ethnic families' voices shape maternity care improvements, reducing racial disparities in maternal health. Together, these projects aim to inform public health strategies, enhance maternity services, and drive systemic change to improve maternal health outcomes.

Exploiting the Immune System to Solve Endometriosis

Endometriosis is a common, chronic disorder in which the uterine lining (the endometrium) is found to grow outside the uterus as endometriotic lesions. In the Greaves lab at WMS, our research focusses on the immune cells, such as macrophages, that are known to play a key role in the development and progression of endometriosis. We utilise a combination of human biopsies, cell models and preclinical mouse models of endometriosis to discover the causative impacts of the immune system, identify biomarkers and therapeutic targets, and perform preclinical testing of potential therapeutics, aiming to solve the puzzle of endometriosis via the immune system.

Beck Taylor and Erin Greaves, WMS

Through interdisciplinary research, the Mission aims to revolutionise how women’s health needs are met, including new diagnostics, treatments, services and policy.