International Maternal and Reproductive Health and Migration


Birgitta Essén leads the IMHm research group and is a Professor in International Maternal and Reproductive Health at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health. She is a Senior Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University Hospital of Uppsala where she is running a clinic especially for immigrant women. Her research and collaborations with several institutions in Sweden, have translated the theoretical knowledge of social & cultural aspects of the reproductive phenomena and then made it applicable in health promotions or in maternity care.

Her resarch group IMHm includes an interdisciplinary research team of gynecologists, anthropologists, sociologists and mathematicians. The research group specifically targets migration and reproductive health data with a focus on reproductive rights policy and social values. The research group IMHm specifically targets migration and reproductive health data with a focus on reproductive rights policy and social values.

Reproductive health is about how to best treat and prevent illness related to reproduction, childlessness, abortion, family planning, pregnancy, and motherhood. However, due to its influx of fundamental social values of humanity in a globalized society, it has become one of the most politicalized topics within medicine and has many claims-makers. The very nature of academic scholarship is the critical investigation and the critical dialogue. The greatest threat to scholarship is therefore when such dialogues are closed, censored, or compromised.

The group has received a strategically large national research grant, as part of the government's national research program in migration and integration, to improve knowledge of how to handle conflicts about values ​​and cultural changes in healthcare. The biggest challenge that we investigate is how care providers can incorporate an equality perspective and at the same time a culturally sensitive care of weight. Both aspects are indicated in health care policies and guidelines, where some of these aspects may be contradictory and are thus an unexplored dilemma in a multicultural care environment. One of the main goals of the project is to explore similarities and differences in cultural values ​​of Swedish caregivers and migrants. Sensitive topics such as reproduction, gender based violence, abortion, contraceptive advice or sexuality issues, during clinical consultations, can lead to tensions and misunderstandings between healthcare providers and migrant patients and ultimately suboptimal care. Research on how health care systems deal with these challenges is sparse.

Global projects

Maternal health and Newborn Sexual Reproductive Health

Migration projects

MigraMed - Equity in Reproductive health care Genitals, gender and ethnicity Maternal health and Newborn

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