24^th March 2006 12.30-2, Room 2.47, Franklin Wilkins Building, King’s College, London

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/about/campuses/waterloo.html

Numerous articles in the media and in the health care literature point a crisis in maternity care, particularly in rural areas.  Obstetricians in Canada are in short supply, their counterparts in the United States face wildly escalating malpractice insurance rates, many family doctors are not practicing obstetrics for both personal and professional reasons; and the modest increase of midwives in both jurisdictions is not enough to make up the shortfall.  The implications of this scarcity for those who need these services is in critical need of examination.  In this talk, I will draw upon data from two studies to address this issue: 1) a study of maternity care human resources in Canada and the U.S. which includes documentary and interview data from key informants; and 2) an in-depth study of over 60 women living in rural areas in two Canadian provinces - Alberta and Ontario specifically regarding their experiences with rural maternity care and the unique challenges they face accessing care.

Ivy Lynn Bourgeault is an Associate Professor in Health Studies and Sociology at McMaster University, Canada.  She also holds a Tier II Canada Research Chair Comparative Health Labour Policy at McMaster.  Ivy has published widely in national and international journals on midwifery and maternity care in Canada and the United States, recently contributing to two chapters in the international edited volume Birth By Design (Routledge, 2001), and co-editing Re-conceiving Midwifery with Cecilia Benoit and Robbie Davis-Floyd (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004).  She is a member of the National Steering Committee on Rural and Remote Women’s Health and of the CIHR Gender, Sex and Health Review Panel. Push! The Struggle to Integrate Midwifery in Ontario, a book with McGill-Queen’s University Press is due out shortly. [log in to unmask]: http://univmail.mcmaster.ca/~bourgea