BoPo Alliance - Researcher - Lauren Kearney

BoPo Alliance – Researcher – Lauren Kearney

Lauren Kearney- Research

Lauren is a midwife, nurse and mother of three little humans. She mainly works in maternal health research, working to improve the way we care for women, newborns and their families.

Lauren is passionate about improving the experience of health care for women and children through translation of high-quality evidence into practice, and she is especially interested in care during labour and birth. Currently, Lauren is a Conjoint Associate Professor of Midwifery at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital and the University of Queensland's School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work. Lauren is the midwifery lead on the RADIANT study. Read more in her bio.

Projects

Elevate: raising women’s and midwives’ voices to shift weight stigma in maternity care

Lauren is supervising midwife and PhD student Anna Robins to co-design an educational resource to foster empathy and reflective learning, to shift healthcare providers attitudes towards larger bodied women.

In collaboration with larger-bodied women and midwives, this participatory exploratory research study will:

Explore larger bodied women’s experiences of pregnancy, birth and postpartum care and their perceptions relating to stigma by maternity care providers.
Explore midwives’ experiences of providing weight-inclusive care to larger bodied women during the childbearing phase.
Use these experiences to co-design (with lived experience participants) a series of narrative portraits.
Co-create an educational resource for maternity care providers.

The first output from this study is now available:

Robins A, Jenkinson B, Kearney L (2025). Navigating Weight Stigma: An integrative review of midwives' knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about caring for larger-bodied women. Midwifery. Available online 7 May 2025, 104444.

For more information, please email arobins@usc.edu.au

Mat-CARES study

Lauren is currently leading the Mat-CARES study: Maternity Care Providers’ attitudes and beliefs toward weight and body size during pregnancy: a cross-sectional survey.

Generously funded through a HiPP CRE: Practising Health Professional Capacity Building SEED grant, this study aims to explore and describe the attitudes and beliefs of maternity care providers toward weight and body size, specifically within the pregnancy, birth and postnatal period. Maternity health care providers, especially midwives and medical staff providing care to women during the perinatal period have been invited to participate. This is a collaborative, interdisciplinary project with co-investigators representing consumer advocacy (Dr Bec Jenkinson), social care (Dr Hill and Professor Skouteris), obstetrics (Dr Nugent), obstetric medicine (Professor Callaway), midwifery (Lauren and Ms Robins, Dr Paliwoda) and General Practice (Dr van den Housel).

This study has now completed data collection and is analysing data.

Centre of Research Excellence
Health in Preconception & Pregnancy

Centre of Research Excellence
Health in Preconception & Pregnancy

Centre of Research Excellence
Health in Preconception & Pregnancy

Centre of Research Excellence
Health in Preconception & Pregnancy