There are known to be long-standing inequalities in maternal outcomes between different ethnic groups and by levels of socio-economic deprivation in England.
About this project
This study aims to address a gap in our knowledge about the need for unplanned hospital care for women and people giving birth in the year following delivery. This includes both emergency department visits as well as emergency inpatient admissions.
The project will have a specific focus on highlighting disparities by ethnic group and for those living in the most deprived areas.
We will document the role of relevant risk factors that might be associated with higher rates of postnatal emergency care contacts.
The work aims to produce information that will help local systems improve not only maternity care services but also – by including information from several years prior to delivery - support primary prevention before pregnancy.
What we’ll do
We will analyse data from national English hospital datasets, covering more than 1.5 million deliveries in three recent years. These datasets are Hospital Episode Statistics and the Emergency Care Dataset.
For each delivery, we will look to see whether the person giving birth had one or more emergency care contacts in the year after delivery and we will describe the reasons for these contacts as recorded in the data.
By building person/delivery-level analysis files (using data from several years before the delivery) and using multivariable statistical modelling, we will test whether the risk of postnatal emergency care contacts was associated with demographic, health and other risk factors.
A special focus of ours will be on describing variations by ethnic group and deprivation groups combined. Our analytical approach is designed to help us report on the most detailed ethnic group categories, without having to group to larger, less specific groupings.
From our quantitative findings, we will draw out potential areas where health and care services might focus efforts to improve the care of mothers and people giving birth now and in the future, and reduce inequalities between groups.
The project is supported by an external advisory group with clinical, academic and patient and public representatives.
Project outputs
Findings from this research will be published in a Nuffield Trust report which will be available on our website. We may also produce other outputs, for example an open access peer reviewed journal paper.
Timelines
The project began in May 2025 and will run until January 2026.
Project team
Theo Georghiou, Emma Dodsworth, Dr Veena Raleigh, Dr Sarah Scobie, Bea Taylor