Which communities are underserved by perinatal mental health services in the BNSSG area, what are the barriers to access and what interventions are needed to address these?
Funding:
BNSSG ICB Research Capability Funding
What is the problem?
The need to reduce inequalities in health is central to the NHS Long Term Plan. Specifically, mental health has been highlighted by NHS England in their report on Advancing Mental Health Equalities Strategy. These inequalities have been further highlighted and the gap widened in the pandemic. The effect on the medical pathways of women who are in the period of time from when they become pregnant and up to a year after giving birth (perinatal) has been highlighted by the Maternal Mental Health Alliance and the Mental Health Foundation, in a report published in March 2021. These inequalities need to be addressed nationally and locally. At a local level there is evidence of inequity of access across mental health services including perinatal mental health pathway (the focus of our work) with those from BAME groups, teenagers and travellers being identified as underserved communities.
What is the aim of the research?
The work aims to identify these underserved communities and the barriers to access, with scope to developing interventions to deal with the barriers. Interventions to address these barriers are likely to involve a change of practice and possibly local policy but the exact nature of the required changes will not be clear until this work has been done.
How will this be achieved?
We will employ a research assistant for six months to work with maternity services, mental health services and Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services including the voluntary sector (psychological treatment services). They will identify data sources that provide information on the proportion of underserved groups across the perinatal pathway. This will establish a method of collecting data which can then be used to assess any changes resulting from interventions as and when they are developed.
The research assistant will then identify stakeholders from the key underserved communities and bring together stakeholders with service provider representatives in a series of meetings using the nominal group technique to identify barriers and develop interventions that might over-come these.
Strong patient and public involvement will be key to form groups to address barriers and co-design interventions. This funding will be in addition to funding provided by the ICB to initiate this scoping work and allow a full grant development to be developed from the intervention development co-design work.
Who is leading the research?
Dr Johnathan Evans, Consultant Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol.
Further information:
For more information or to get involved with this project, please contact bnssg.research@nhs.net