293287
Knowledge assessment of local guatemalan midwives in the trifinio region: An initial step for establishing a midwifery educational program to improve maternal outcomes
Edwin Asturias, MD,
Section of Pediatric Infectious Disease at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Pubic Health, University of Colorado School of Medicine and University of Colorado School of Public Health, Aurora, CO
Stephen Berman, MD,
Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and holds an endowed chair in Academic General Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Colorado., University of Colorado School of Medicine and University of Colorado School of Public Health, Aurora, CO
In 2011, the University of Colorado School of Public Health Center for Global Health (CGH) was approached by Agroamerica, a Guatemalan owned company, to review the existing community health projects that serve their workers. The overall objective was to identify the health needs of the community and to create a partnership between the two groups. The CGH identified maternal/child health as being the leading need of the communities within the Trifinio region. To begin the work a birth registry was developed and health workers trained to gather and enter the data into a database reviewed by CGH Faculty. The CGH also recommended the establishment of a clinic to serve the local families as the communities within the Trifinio region are approximately one hour from a hospital. The clinic will offer care to the family as well as a birth center. One of the projects of the clinic will be to offer educational programs to the local midwives to improve their emergency obstetric skills. To begin this process I travelled to Guatemala in February of 2013 and administered a survey to twelve local midwives to evaluate their baseline knowledge. This survey will be used to develop site-specific curriculum to train the midwives. This project is in alignment with the United Nations Millenium Development Goal #5a and is being developed as a sustainable long-term project between Agroamerica and the CGH.
Learning Areas:
Public health or related education
Learning Objectives:
Identify learning needs of local midwives in the Trifinio region of Guatemala
Describe the scope of practice of traditional midwives
Keyword(s): Maternal and Child Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been a Certified Nurse-Midwive since 2001 and am involved in the education of American trained midwives. In 1998 I worked in India for a summer training traditional birth attendants. The primary focus of my MPH involves maternal mortality and morbidity. I sit on a committee for the Colorado Department of Public Health on maternal mortality/morbidity and am on an interdisciplinary workgroup with ACNM/CDC/ACOG to improve US maternal mortality/morbidity outcomes.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
