Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health potx

[...]... Edwards and Sheena Byrom January 2007 Chapter 1 The Midwifery Public Health Agenda: Setting the Scene Debbie Garrod and Sheena Byrom If you wish to foretell the health of future generations, look in the perambulators (Nye Bevan, at the inauguration of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948) What is public health? Public health aims to address the health and healthcare needs of populations, bringing together... levels of health and ill health, which are described fully in Chapter 2 It uses the evidence on these links to develop social policy aimed to have a positive impact on the wider determinants of health (RCM 2001) The purpose of this book is to increase midwives’ knowledge base on a whole range of public health issues that have a direct 2 Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health impact on the health. .. addressing health inequalities have influenced midwifery practice The creation of specific public health roles for midwives is an important part of the implementation of Government strategy to tackle the root causes of ill health since the late 1990s As the profile of the public health agenda has increased, so has the number of midwifery roles with public health in their title, plus ‘new’ specialist midwifery. .. housing, benefits and education This close interagency working characterises the public health approach to midwifery care The Midwifery Public Health Agenda 3 Particular health needs A population may consist of a group of people with a particular health need, which may or may not have existed before the pregnancy Women with mental health problems, for example, have a particular set of needs during the childbearing... A public health approach to midwifery enables midwives to use the knowledge and evidence that exists about trends and patterns of wellness and disease; and to offer personalised and appropriate care to address these needs 4 Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health What does your local community look like? When striving to provide individualised, appropriate, family-centred care, midwives and health. .. factors which shape and influence the health of individuals and communities (Royal College of Midwives (RCM) 2001) Public health seeks to protect and improve the health of communities: it works to identify the underlying causes of health and well-being, and also of disease and ill health, looking for patterns and trends in particular populations Public health sets health in its widest social and political... During the 1930s, a National Maternity Service was established with the aim of making childbearing safer by improving existing 8 Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health services, based on free domiciliary midwifery care The services were provided through local authority public health departments Trained midwives offered basic antenatal and postnatal as well as intrapartum care; there were systems established... Public Health outlined the public health activities that all midwives are involved in when providing midwifery care to individual and groups of women For example, midwives offer information and advice on a broad range of issues, including healthy eating, exercise, screening tests, support to stop smoking and promotion of breastfeeding Birth is a public health issue because of its impact on the health. .. ‘populations’ of women, taking a public health approach to midwifery enables women and their families to use pregnancy as a time of unique opportunity for improving health and well-being and reducing inequalities in health Thus midwives begin to realise their potential as public health practitioners, whose key role is to identify and influence those factors which promote the health of the population (DoH... on teenage pregnancy, smoking cessation, domestic violence Specialist 10 Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health roles have changed the face of midwifery and provided the profession with opportunity to develop and refocus care provision to those with highest needs The leadership strand to these posts is to ‘mainstream’ public health thinking – to facilitate a ripple effect throughout maternity services . alt="" Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health Edited by Grace Edwards RGN, RM, ADM, Cert Ed, MEd, PhD Sheena Byrom RGN, RM, MA Essential Midwifery Practice: Public. Byrom RGN, RM, MA Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health Edited by Grace Edwards RGN, RM, ADM, Cert