Interested in participating? Email Cassandra Caddy here

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the way maternity care in Australia is delivered with fewer face-to-face antenatal appointments, cancellation of antenatal education classes and limits on support persons present during appointments, labour and birth.

Access to accurate and reliable health information is important to help pregnant people stay informed and make decisions about their pregnancy, birth and postnatal care. This can include information about antenatal care, birthing options, feeding advice, information about changes to health services, and COVID-19 vaccine information. The challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the need for messages and health communications to keep up with constant and rapidly changing circumstances around public health measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission, and the subsequent impact on maternity care.

This study will explore what health messages and advice people have received during pregnancy and after birth about COVID-19. Health messages may include, but are not limited to, advice from health professionals (midwives and doctors), government health messages, social media, family and friends.

We are interested in hearing from people living in Australia who are currently pregnant or have been pregnant since March 2020. This includes women who have and haven’t tested positive for COVID-19 during this time. Participants will be asked to complete a 30–60 minute telephone or online ‘Zoom’ video interview and will be provided a gift voucher for their time.

This project aims to improve the quality of the information provided to people to help support them throughout their pregnancy and after birth during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to better understand the types of information people feel they need during this time and future public health crises.

Timeline

Recruitment is currently underway.

Interviews are planned to finish at the end of July 2021.