ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Life-Course Epidemiology and Social Inequalities in Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1613249
This article is part of the Research TopicMigration and Health: A Human Rights Perspective - Conference Insights and BeyondView all articles
Respectful Maternity Care Experiences of South Asian Refugees in the US: A Qualitative Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Colorado, Denver, United States
- 2University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, United States
- 3College of Nursing, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, United States
- 4Aurora Mental Health and Recovery, Aurora, Colorado, United States
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Introduction Immigrants and refugees giving birth in the United States face challenges in receiving high-quality maternity care. The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of recent refugees from ethnic communities displaced from southern Asia and resettled in the United StatesThe qualitative study used focus group discussions with three refugee communities who have given birth since resettlement in the United States. Using thematic analysis, we applied the concepts of respectful maternity care to identify themes.Five themes emerged from the analysis: (1) interpersonal caring, (2) flaws in US maternity care are amplified for refugees, (3) multidimensionality effects knowledge, preferences, and expectations, (4) complexity of the US health system combined with unfamiliarity contributes to lack of confidence, and (5) problems with language interpretation.The identified themes can inform specific, actionable policies and programs that improve care for immigrant and refugee communities including investment in nursing care, implementation of multilingual doula care, improvements in language services, and robust childbirth education.
Keywords: Maternal health, Refugee, language interpretation, United States, Maternity care, qualitative research
Received: 16 Apr 2025; Accepted: 10 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Smith, Thumm, Tien and Kissler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Denise Colter Smith, University of Colorado, Denver, United States
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