Applicant Organization: Midwives Alliance of North America, Division of Research
The proposed project will capitalize on recent international attention received by MANA Stats by allowing Division of Research (DOR) members to focus on accelerating the rate at which peer reviewed manuscripts are published. As MANA Stats research is published, interest in the dataset grows, and we are currently assisting researchers from Australia, Iceland, Canada, and Puerto Rico; faculty and students at Bastyr, Brown, UNLV, UC Davis, Emory, and other universities in the US; midwives in New York; and the Gates Foundation, as they use MANA Stats for their own research. Funding for this project will be used to provide protected research time for DOR researchers for their own work, in exchange for which they will publish papers on: water birth (updated), optimal fetal positioning, advanced maternal age, Apgar scores—are they useful as a predictor of poor outcomes, placentophagy, a comparison of outcomes in birth centers vs. home, and outcomes among women of size, among others. We will dedicate a substantial amount of the requested funding to disseminating our work beyond academic audiences (e.g., creating continuing education [CEU] modules for midwives, educators, physicians, and others; creating patient education handouts, creating outreach materials for policy makers and legislators).
