A $1,650 award is offered annually by Beverley O’Brien for graduate students pursuing research into woman-centered, holistic and physiologic maternity care. Beverley O’Brien is a UBC Nursing alumna, Professor Emerita in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Nursing, and a Registered Midwife. Graduate students who are registered in any UBC graduate program are eligible to apply for this Graduate Student award. There is a strong preference for this award to go to a nurse or midwife pursuing graduate work. The focus of the graduate work must be on strengthening mothers through the development of research evidence. All applicants must be in good academic standing with the University, and must be making satisfactory progress towards their degree as defined by the UBC Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. For more information: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/awards/strengthening-mothers-through-perinatal-research-award
Congratulations to Eunice Bawafaa for her 2022 Strengthening Mothers through Perinatal Research Award!
Eunice is a PhD student in the School of Nursing at UBC. The purpose of her study is to show how a contextualized explanation of women’s experiences and perspectives of reproductive healthcare can provide direction for nursing’s future efforts to improve access to care in rural Ghana. There is extensive literature showing that the healthcare system developed as a colonial infrastructure with European values, and women’s knowledge and experiences with reproductive and maternity care in Sub-Saharan Africa are discounted in the face of western biomedical practices and knowledge.
Congratulations to Michelle Turner for her 2021 Strengthening Mothers through Perinatal Research Award!
Michelle is a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Studies at UBC and a Midwifery Clinical Instructor who will design and test a drama-based childbirth education program for grade 4 students to discover if and how it can increase understanding and reduce fears of birth, with the objective of improving health outcomes for women and newborns by changing cultural attitudes toward birth.
Congratulations to Kayonne Christy, a Master’s degree student in Sociology at UBC whose research project, Investigating racial disparities in maternal health: An intersectional, cross-national examination of Black women’s experiences of prenatal care will examine the experience of Black women in Canada and Jamaica with prenatal care. She will look at the similarities and differences in the prenatal healthcare experiences of Black women in Jamaica and Canada to determine what accounts for these similarities and differences, specifically focusing on racial inequalities.