Increasing diversity in maternity illustrations and textbooks

What is the project about?

This is a joint project between the University of Salford and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. We are collecting clinical photographs of common maternity and neonatal conditions in women and birthing people (and/or their babies) with Black, Brown and ethnically diverse skin tones. These images will be included in a digital teaching handbook and made available globally to universities, midwives, student midwives and other healthcare professionals as an open-access digital educational resource. The resource will also enable women and birthing people and their families to recognise important presentations of conditions, supporting earlier understanding, reassurance and timely access to care.

This project is recruiting service users who have booked their care with MFT and are receiving care at one of the three sites: North Manchester, Oxford Road Campus and Wythenshawe.

Objective of the project

The objective of the project is to produce a digital maternity specific handbook to raise awareness of how common conditions of pregnancy, intrapartum and the postnatal period can present differently on darker skin tones in order to improve education, assessment, diagnosis and treatment of Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnicity maternity service users.

This project is funded by the Greater Manchester and East Cheshire Local Maternity and Neonatal System as part of the Maternity Equity and Equality Action Plan 2022 – 2027.