Avslutade projekt

Midwives work with contraceptive counselling and contraception among women with intellectual disability (ID) in Sweden

The aims of the project was to gain a deeper understanding of midwives’ perceptions of sexual health and contraceptive use of women with ID, and of midwives’ practices in providing contraceptive counselling to women with ID by focus groups. The midwives experienced ambivalence, uncertainty and ethical dilemmas when counselling women with ID. They stated that few women with ID requested contraceptive counselling, which limited midwives’ knowledge, experience and competence. The midwives therefore planned the visits carefully and strived to enabale informed choices about contraceptives for these women. They wanted to ensure the best-adapted contraceptive method balanced aginst any risk of long-term use and possible side effects for individual women.

Collaborations

Berit Höglund
Margareta Larsson

Funding

ALF

Responsible researcher/contact person

Berit Höglund

Evaluating a new model about insights in reproductive health and parenting in adulthood among students with intellectual disability (ID) – a randomized controlled intervention study

The aim of the project is to develop and evaluate an intervention method using the Parenting Toolkit “Children – what does it involve? and the Real Care Baby (RCB) simulator among students with ID. This project follows the outline from our pilot study “An intervention using the Parent Toolkit “Children-What does it involve and the Real Care Baby simulator among students with intellectual disability – A feasibility study, (2018)”.

The intervention has involved seven high schools in Sweden, which consists of educational sessions twelve weeks (1,5 hours/week) and taking care of the RCB simulator during 3 days and nights at home. Other high schools are during recruitment. Data collection is ongoing and is based on structured questionnaires to the students as well as in depth interviews with 15 students.

Collaborations

Berit Höglund
Margareta Larsson
Gunnel Janeslätt

Funding

ALF
Regionala Forskningsmedel Uppsala-Örebro regionen (RFR)

Responsible researcher/contact person

Berit Höglund, berit.hoglund@kbh.uu.se
Margareta Larsson, margareta.larsson@kbh.uu.se

Foster care and prevention among children to mothers with intellectual disability (ID)

The aim of the study is to explore if foster care protect physical injuries, child abuse and violence among children to mothers with ID in Sweden. This project is a national register study (National Board of Health and Welfare and Statistics Sweden) during 1999-2012 comparing data with other children born to mothers without ID. The statistical analyses are ongoing.

Collaborations

Berit Höglund
Maria Lundgren
Jan Gustafsson

Funding

Sävstaholm Foundation
Gillbergska Foundation

Responsible researcher/contact person

Berit Höglund, berit.hoglund@kbh.uu.se

Introducing and Evaluating a Reproductive Life Plan

www.reproduktivlivsplan.se is part of a research project on health and lifestyle before, during and after pregnancy. The aim of this sub-project is to increase young people’s knowledge of the impact that age and life style habits have on fertility, through a website with evidence based information. The background of the preventative venture is that many women and men postpone childbearing to age, when especially, a woman’s fertility has started to decline. Preventative information may help to increase young people’s possibilities to make informed choices when it comes to life style and reproductive health, which can have positive impact on fertility, pregnancy, birth and the health of future children.

www.reproduktivlivsplan.se is being translated into several languages and can be used for preconception health and care information by health care providers, and/or by individual women, men or couples.

The inspiration for this project comes from, among others, the American public health authority CDC. Similar projects are going on in several European countries, e.g. in Denmark, Belgium, England and Italy.

Funding

Medical Faculty of Uppsala University, Bayer, Genusmedel, Regionala forskningsmedel, and Vårdforskningsmedel

Responsible researcher/contact person

Maria Ekstrand, maria.ekstrand@kbh.uu.se
Tanja Tydén, tanja.tyden@kbh.uu.se

RLP Youth

Preconception care is defined as the provision of biomedical, behavioral and social health interventions prior to conception, to improve health status and reduce risk factors that contribute to poor maternal and child health outcomes. Health behaviors initiated during adolescence may have a great impact on future health and reproductive outcomes. Given the worrying trends among young people of increased sexual risk taking such as high numbers of STI and induced abortions, and scarce knowledge of fertility and factors that might impair fertility and reproductive health, starting preconception health promotion and education in the early reproductive years has the potential to increase fertility awareness and to optimize physical, emotional, and social wellbeing throughout the life course.

‘RLP Youth’ is an interdisciplinary project with special emphasis on promoting adolescent preconception health. The overall aim is to increase awareness, knowledge and beliefs towards fertility and preconception health among adolescents by developing, implementing and evaluating a tool for reproductive life planning called ‘Reproductive Life Plan’ (RLP). The RLP concept has been tested among female Swedish university students and was found to increase the women´s knowledge about fertility and was well adopted by the midwives performing the RLP counselling. It is likely that this concept would be useful also among adolescents and could advantageously be included in contraceptive- or other forms of counselling at arenas such as Youth Clinics.

The RLP Youth-project includes quantitative and qualitative methods, such as individual interviews, focus group discussions, and a randomized controlled study. Gender and diversity aspects will be critically addressed in the project, which is approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board in Uppsala, Sweden, D.nr. 2018/413

Funding

European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), the Family Planning Fund of Uppsala, Ebba Danelius foundation, Uppsala Nursing home foundation. The project is a collaboration between Uppsala University, Sophiahemmet University, Mälardalen University and Lund University.

Responsible researcher/contact person

Maria Grandahl, maria.grandahl@kbh.uu.se
Magdalena Mattebo, magdalena.mattebo@kbh.uu.se
Maria Ekstrand, maria.ekstrand@kbh.uu.se
Jenny Stern, jenny.stern@kbh.uu.se
Alkistis Skalkidou, alkistis.skalkidou@kbh.uu.se
Karin Cato, karin.cato@kbh.uu.se

Life-style factors and reproduction

Health and lifestyle are of great importance when women intend to get pregnant, as well as during pregnancy. It is also crucial that people seeking for infertility are aware of the precise lifestyle changes they can implement in order to enhance the likelihood of treatment success. The overall aim of the project was to investigate the extent to which women comply with the recommendations for lifestyle during the time trying to conceive and early pregnancy and the impact of risk lifestyle factors on treatment result in sub-fertile women. Pregnant women and sub-fertile women answered a questionnaire which included questions on the type of lifestyle factors and mental health at baseline year and number of lifestyle changes made while the women had been trying to conceive with a planned follow-up two years later. Our study assesses furthermore the individual, as well as the cumulative effect of lifestyle risk factors on reproductive outcomes after a first completed IVF cycle. These negative lifestyle factors are easy to detect at an early stage of the assessment process and might allow for optimization of the treatment outcome.

Please read more on http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1175795/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Collaborators

Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet; https://ki.se/meb/uppstart

Funding

Uppsala University Hospital, the Family Planning Fund in Uppsala, the Uppsala-Örebro Regional Research Council, the Swedish Research Council, and Västmanland County Council

Responsible researcher/contact person

Alkistis Skalkidou, alkistis.skalkidou@kbh.uu.se
Lana Salih Joelsson, lana.salih@kbh.uu.se

The midwife’s dialogue about alcohol in a life cycle perspective with parents-to-be

The aim of the project is to develop and to evaluate a method and a theory about social and psychosocial support for an alcohol-free pregnancy and for responsible alcohol consumption during parenthood, involving both parents-to-be.  It will also evaluate the feasibility of the implementation of such a method.

The intervention consists of a dialogue about alcohol with both parents-to-be in the beginning of a pregnancy.  The dialogue is based on a semi-structured guide and the aim is to prevent and to detect alcohol disorders and to refer for treatment. The intervention is evaluated by questionnaires to both parents. The questionnaires will also be evaluated through different techniques.

Funding

Public Health Agency in Sweden

Responsible researcher/contact person

Hjördis Högberg, hjordis.hogberg@kbu.uu.se
Margareta Larsson, margareta.larsson@kbh.uu.se
Michael Wells (Karolinska Institute), michael.wells@ki.se

Pornography, Youth and Health

The overall aim of Magdalena Mattebo’s PhD project was to investigate pornography use among young people in Sweden in relation to health indicators and attitudes to gender equality. The core category emerging from focus group discussions, among personnel working with adolescents, was “Conflicting messages about sexuality”. The participants’ stated that the message conveyed by pornography was contradictory to the message conveyed by national public health goals and laws. A professional approach was emphasized, and adequate methods and knowledge to improve sexuality and relationship education were requested.

A prospective longitudinal questionnaire study among 800 high school students showed that pornography has become a part of everyday life for many adolescents. Frequent users of pornography were mainly boys, and there were minor differences in sexual experiences between the male consumption groups. Frequent use was associated with lifestyle problems, such as the use of alcohol and a sedentary lifestyle to a higher extent than with sexual experiences and physical symptoms. In the longitudinal analyses frequent use of pornography was more associated to psychosomatic symptoms compared with depressive symptoms.

Funding

Uppsala University, European Society of Contraception and Reproductive Health, Regional Research Council, Uppsala-Örebro

Responsible researcher/contact person

Magdalena Mattebo, magdalena.mattebo@kbh.uu.se
Tanja Tydén, tanja.tyden@kbh.uu.se
Margareta Larsson, margareta.larsson@kbh.uu.se

Information about fetal diagnostics

Responsible researcher/contact person

Ove Axelsson, ove.axelsson@kbh.uu.se

Information before prenatal tests for chromosomal aberrations

We elucidate what pregnant women coming for prenatal tests of Downs syndrome know about Down syndrome, what they think about the received information and what kind of information they had wished to get.

Funding

The Regional Research Fund, ALF

Responsible researcher/contact person

Ove Axelsson, ove.axelsson@kbh.uu.se

3D-ultrasound among patients with previous caesarean section, as well as postpartum

Responsible researcher/contact person

Ajlana Mulic Lutvica, ajlana.lutvica@kbh.uu.se

Markers that can predict the start of spontaneous delivery

Responsible researcher/contact person

Ove Axelsson, ove.axelsson@kbh.uu.se

Placenta complications after caesarean section

Responsible researcher/contact person

Ove Axelsson, ove.axelsson@kbh.uu.se

Midwives’ emotional wellbeing and health

A high proportion of midwives leave the profession due to stress and heavy workload or dissatisfaction with salary or working conditions. A random sample of midwives from Sweden, Australia and New Zealand were recruited to a study where burnout and work related aspects are compared.

Responsible researcher/contact person

Ingegerd Hildingsson, ingegerd.hildingsson@kbh.uu.se

Last modified: 2022-02-18
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