e-posters - 5th European Conference on Preconception Health and Care

Amie Steel

Dr Amie Steel is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Public Health at Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney. She is also co-convenor of the Public Health Association of Australia Women’s Health Special Interest Group.

Preconception health behaviour and planning by pregnant women in Australia.

Aoife de Brún

Aoife de Brún is a GP and IBCLC in Co Roscommon, Ireland. She has a special interest in women's health and antenatal and postnatal care in the community.

Preconception Misconceptions: A Case Series Demonstrating the Role of the GP in Preconception Healthcare.

Bola Grace

Dr Bola Grace has extensive experience in women’s health across industry and academia; and values collaborative research into a variety of topics including SRH, Digital Health, and DEI. Bola has a PhD in Population Health & Epidemiology from University College London and an MBA from University of Cambridge Judge Business School. She enjoys coaching and mentoring, and is passionate about helping underrepresented groups in STEM.

Fertility Intention Typology (FIT) and potential applications: a mixed-methods study.

Briony Hill

Dr Briony Hill is an NHMRC Early Career Fellow and Deputy Head of the Health and Social Care Unit at Monash University, Australia. Dr Hill is leading research in new socioecological approaches for maternal weight stigma, lifestyle health, behaviour change, psychosocial wellbeing, and obesity prevention, with a particular interest in the preconception, pregnancy and postpartum periods.

Drivers of weight stigma against preconception women.

Catherine Stewart

Catherine Stewart is a Research Assistant in the Sexual and Reproductive Health Research Team at UCL. She has a BSc in Reproductive Biology from The University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Reproductive Science and Women’s Health from UCL. She has experience of both quantitative and qualitative research, with areas of interest including pregnancy preparation, pregnancy intentions and utilisation of maternal healthcare. 

Pregnancy preparation amongst women and their partners in the UK; how common is it and what do people do?

Chandni Maria Jacob

Cherie Caut

Cherie Caut is a PhD Candidate within the Australian Research Centre in Complementary and Integrative Medicine (ARCCIM), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Cherie’s PhD is exploring the preconception health literacy, and beliefs and attitudes towards preconception care, of health professionals in Australia. 

Providing preconception care in Australia; perspectives and experiences of general practitioners, midwives, and naturopaths.

Daniella Watson

Daniella Watson is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at King’s College London and is training to become a Chartered Health Psychologist through the British Psychological Society.  Daniella is currently working within preconception health in South Africa and is a Healthy Conversation Skills trainer.’

A scoping review of nutritional interventions and policy guidelines in the interconception period for prevention of non-communicable diseases.

Edwina Dorney

Eleni Spyreli

Dr Eleni Spyreli is a Research Fellow within the Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast. She is a Registered Dietitian and currently working in the Supporting MumS study, a UK-wide trial to test the effectiveness of text messages in weight management during the postpartum life. 

Cultural adaptation of a lifestyle and weight management text message intervention for women in the postpartum period.

Preconception behaviour change through mobile phone apps: an evidence review.

Poster 1

Online self-assessment tools to improve the delivery of preconception care in rural and remote populations.

Poster 2

Eleonora Hristova 

Eleonora Hristova, MD is a chief assistant in Medical University - Plovdiv. She works in the Department of Social medicine and Public health from 10 years. She has acquired PhD degree - "Family planning and promotion of reproductive health" and specialisation in "Social medicine and health management". Her academic interests are in the field of family planning, preconception care, rare diseases and health legislation.

Preconceptional care for more healthy families.

Emily Christina Koert

Emily Koert is a Registered Psychologist and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research and clinical work is focused in the field of reproductive health including psychosocial consequences of infertility, pregnancy loss, use of assisted reproduction and childlessness; family formation and childbearing decision-making; and fertility awareness and education.

Common experiences during pregnancy after pregnancy loss: A longitudinal qualitative study with pregnant women and their partners. 

Emma Cassinelli

Emma Hope Cassinelli is a PhD student at Queen's University Belfast. She is currently working on the analysis of preconception-related data routinely collected in Northern Ireland, and on the development of a PPI advisory panel called "Healthy Reproductive Years.

Patient and public involvement and engagement contributions to pre- and interconception health and care research.

Hanne Van Uytsel

Hanne Van Uytsel had been trained as a midwife and obtained a Master of Science in Nursing and Obstetrics. She is a second-year PhD student at KU Leuven within the REALIFE research group. Her research focuses on lifestyle interventions before, during and after pregnancy, and the impact on perinatal outcomes and mental health.

Mental health after childbirth and the impact on postpartum weight retention & body composition. Data from the INTER-ACT randomized controlled trial.

Heather Hopper

Heather Hopper  is a registered midwife since 1994 and worked in both clinical practice and higher education, mainly in the South West of England. I am currently undertaking a part time PhD alongside my teaching commitments at the University of Plymouth, with the aim to improve people’s health and wellbeing through evidence-based care.

Findings from a realist review of preconception care for people with health conditions.

Hitomi Suzuki

Hitomi Suzuki is a midwife and researcher at the Japanese National Center for Child Health and Development, where we study preconception care development in Japan. For my doctoral thesis, I am working for e-learning development and validation for care providers.

Challenges in Preconception Care in Japan.

Ilse Delbaere

Ilse Delbaere (BSc, MSc, PhD) is lecturer and researcher at the midwifery education of VIVES University of Applied Sciences (Kortrijk, Belgium). Her research is centered on preconception care and fertility awareness. She is member of the International Fertility Education Initiative and coordinator of the Belgian Fertility Education Initiative.

Fertility knowledge: survey in 1700 Flemish pupils in the last grade of secondary school.  

Poster 1

Evaluation of sexual education: survey in 1700 Flemish pupils in the last grade of secondary school. 

Poster 2

Attitude towards having children: survey in 1700 Flemish pupils in the last grade of secondary school.  

Poster 3

Jantine van Rijckevorsel-Scheele

Jantine van Rijckevorsel-Scheele works as a researcher at Research Centre Innovations in Care at the Rotterdam University of Applied Science. Her main research theme is Midwifery & Childbirth. She also works as a teacher in the physician assistant master’s program.

Current practice of preconception care in the Netherlands.

Jayne Walker

Joint presenting author - Lolita Alfred

Jayne began her career as a registered Adult Nurse in 1996, before progressing to Midwifery in 1999. Jayne's clinical practice then transitioned to become a Specialist Community Public Health Nurse (Health Visitor) in 2005. Jayne has an MSc in Health Studies (Leadership and Education) and has worked at the University of Hull since 2017. Jayne is a Senior Lecturer and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Jayne is an early career researcher and has a particular interest in perinatal and infant mental health and preconception care.

Is the preconception period suitable for alcohol prevention? A narrative scoping review of women’s and Health Care Professional’s views.

Jennifer Hall

Dr Jennifer Hall is a Clinical Associate Professor and NIHR Advanced Fellow at the UCL Institute for Women’s Health. She is an Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine at UCLH and OHID and has been working as a Senior Epidemiologist in UKHSA on COVID-19 since March 2020

Mind the Gap: Developing an integrated, community-based model combining contraception and preconception care to address reproductive health needs across the lifecourse.

Julia Dixon

Julia is an accredited practising dietitian in Sydney, Australia. She specialises in prenatal and fertility nutrition and is passionate about communicating the profound benefits of good nutrition preconception, in pregnancy and postpartum. 

Associations between pregnancy intention and adherence to dietary recommendations among two generations of Australian women.

Katherine Maslowski

Katherine is a New Zealand-trained doctor. She recently completed an MSc in Women's Health at the UCL Institute for Women's Health which cultivated an interest in sexual and reproductive health education for both young people and adults.

Reproductive health education in the UK: an analysis of biology curricula and students’ experiences.

Kathy Whyte

Kathy is a registered nurse and midwife with a masters in nutritional medicine. Kathy has a keen interest in preventative health specifically the early origins of health and disease, developing healthier lives. Whilst completing her masters Kathy became fascinated by Professor David Barker’s research, emailed him to ask if they could meet for lunch, which he agreed to, this meeting continues to inspire Kathy in her work.  www.nurturemum.ie

Development of pregnancy health hubs in pharmacy throughout Ireland.

Laura McGowan

Laura McGowan is a psychologist, her research focuses on the development and implementation of theory-based behaviour change interventions to improve diet and nutrition status and to prevent and manage obesity, in a variety of population groups. Laura has a particular interest in the role of novel behaviour-change methods and is keen to explore dietary behaviour change across the life-course, including in preconception, pregnancy and aging populations. 

Understanding attitudes towards nutrition and healthy weight status for men and women in the preconception period: An exploratory, cross-sectional survey of reproductive aged adults across the United Kingdom and Ireland. 

Libby Humphris

Joint presenting author - Zoë Abbott

Mrs Libby Humphris is an Expert by Experience, working on the FAMILIAR Study with PhD researcher Zoë Abbott.

A review of coproduction interventions in family planning and preconception care for women with inflammatory arthritis.

Lolita Alfred

Joint presenting author - Jayne Walker

Lolita is a lecturer in mental health at City, University of London. She is an early career researcher with a particular interest in alcohol use and prevention of alcohol related harm from preconception and right across the lifespan. She qualified as a mental health nurse in 2004, and her areas of clinical practice have predominantly been within the specialism of forensic mental health nursing, and within public health. She holds an MSc and PhD in Public Health and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Is the preconception period suitable for alcohol prevention? A narrative scoping review of women’s and Health Care Professional’s views.

Loveness Mwase-Musicha

Loveness Mwase-Musicha is an upcoming Reproductive Health Scientist with interest in preconception health and care research. I am a recipient of the Commonwealth Scholarship and hold an MSc in Reproductive Science and Women’s Health from University College London, and a BSc in Obstetrics and International Leadership from Warwick University. I have vast clinical experience, having earlier qualified and worked as a Clinical Officer in Malawi for over 11 years, during which time I also coordinated Malaria Programmes at district level and worked for a number of research projects.

How do women prepare for pregnancy in a low-income setting? Prevalence and
associated factors.

Malcolm Moffat

Joint presenting author - Tanha Begum

Primary care contraception prescribing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maria Ekstrand Ragnar

I am a registered nurse midwife, PhD and lecturer in Sexual and reproductive health at the medical faculty at Lund University in Sweden. 
One of my main research interests concern preconception health and care and teenagers’ fertility related knowledge and attitudes in particular. Other research areas of interest are sexual risk taking, contraceptive use and abortion.  

The International Fertility Education Initiative – a global collaboration to improving fertility awareness.

Mariana Bernal Andrade

Mariana Bernal Andrade is a Mexican Nutritionist and Diabetes Educator. Mariana works in private practice and her area of especialism is women´s health. She is developing a project called Mum´s Equilibrium which aims to provide a series of interventions before, during and after pregnancy in order to improve women and children´s health.

Materclass on Preconception Care for Mexican women with polycystic ovary syndrome.

Megha Singh

The association of pregnancy complications/risk factors with the development of future health conditions in women: Overarching protocol for umbrella reviews.

Poster 1

Association of autoimmune diseases and adverse pregnancy outcomes in women :-Protocol for an umbrella review.

Poster 2

Mirjam Raudasoja

Mirjam Raudasoja is doctoral researcher at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her dissertation concerns the development of self-esteem in the perinatal period, fear of childbirth, birth experiences, mothering ideologies, and parental burnout. She is passionate about feminist frameworks to reproduction and motherhood.

The Role of Self-esteem on Fear of Childbirth and Birth Experience.

Nava Rezaeinamini

Fertility awareness is the necessity of preconception health and care.

Poster 1

The promotion of health requires taking steps backwards.

Poster 2

Nigar Kamilova

Nigar Kamilova is a professor of Medical Sciences at the Azerbaijan Medical University, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Nigar is the President of NGO "Support for the Development of Medical Science". Nigar is also the Vice-President of NGO "Society of Gerontologists of Azerbaijan". She is the author of more than 200 scientific publications, 6 textbooks and 9 monographs.

Optimization of preconception preparation in women after myomectomy.

Nishadi Withanage

Nishadi Withanage is a PhD candidate at SPHERE, NHMRC centre of research excellence in sexual and reproductive health for women in primary care at Monash University, Melbourne. She has a strong passion for enhancing preconception care interventions that are available to women through primary care settings, to improve pregnancy outcomes. 

Feasibility of using general practice electronic medical records to identify women who may most require preconception care in Australia: a protocol.

Poster 1

The effectiveness of preconception interventions in primary care: a systematic review.

Poster 2

Olivia Righton

Olivia Righton has just completed her MSc in Women and Children's Health at King's College London. Her dissertation examined preconception health indicators in British birth cohort studies. Olivia's research interests include preconception and prenatal nutrition, reproductive health, and early life nutrition.  

Exploring Preconception Indicators in British Birth Cohort Studies.

Randi Sylvest

Randi Sylvest is Postdoc, PhD, MSc in Public Health from Copenhagen University, Denmark. Her research field includes qualitative research with focus on men, family formation, fertility treatment and fertility awareness. She has conducted over 100 interviews. She is also working with quantitative studies including registries with focus on fertility preservation. Conducted over 20 original papers with peer-review and had presented at several big conferences worldwide.

A qualitative study on young peoples’ thoughts about fertility: How to talk about fertility.

Rina Biswakarma

Rina is a PhD student at UCL with research interest in reproductive health and fertility education. She has obtained her BSc in Biomedical Science and MRes in Reproductive Science and Women’s Health. Rina also works part-time for the charity Fertility Network UK. 

How should we develop fertility education in UK schools?

Sarah Van Haeken

Sarah Verbiest

Dr. Sarah Verbiest is the Director of the Jordan Institute for Families in the School of Social Work and the Executive Director of the Collaborative for Maternal and Infant Health in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She co-edited – Preconception Health and Care: A Lifecourse Perspective (2020), co-leads the Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center and the Show Your Love Campaign

A Roadmap toward Equitable, Coordinated, Quality Reproductive Care for Women with Chronic Conditions.

Development of a resilience-enhancing intervention during and after pregnancy: a systematic process informed by the BCW-framework.

Poster 1

Perinatal Resilience for the First 1,000 Days of Life. Concept Analysis and Delphi Survey.

Poster 2

Sharissa Smith

Sharissa is a MD with affinity for social vulnerability and ethics. Uplifting the vulnerable population and scaffolding their health agency is paramount to her. In the future, she hopes to become a gyneacologist.

Nudging vulnerable women through an mHealth app to increase preconception care uptake: Pilot study protocol.

Sue Channon

Sue Channon is in Paediatric Clinical Psychology and Family Therapy and I became involved in research initially in 1990s when I wanted to explore the potential of Motivational Interviewing as an approach to supporting young people diagnosed with diabetes. My work in the Centre for Trials Research in Cardiff has included studies around child health, weight management, sexual and reproductive health, and I have a particular interest in process evaluation, taking a systemic perspective on intervention development, implementation and understanding the service users’ experience, all of which were relevant to the Plan-it study presented here.

The acceptability of asking women to delay removal of a long-acting reversible contraceptive to take part in a preconception weight loss programme: A mixed methods study using qualitative and routine data (Plan-it).

Tanha Begum

Joint presenting author - Malcolm Moffat

Tanha Begum is a recent MPharm graduate I completed my dissertation on contraception provision during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am a trainee pharmacist currently undergoing my foundation training at a community pharmacy to become a qualified pharmacist.

Primary care contraception prescribing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tessy Boedt

Tessy Boedt is a Pelvic Health Physiotherapist and Nutrition Scientist. Postdoctoral Researcher in Lifestyle and Reproductive Health at KU Leuven, Belgium. Mom of 2. (Beach)volleyball player. World traveller.

Effectiveness of a mobile preconception lifestyle programme on reproductive outcomes in couples undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Zoë Abbott

Joint presenting author - Libby Humphris

Zoë Abbott, PhD student at Cardiff University, co-produced this Realist Literature Synthesis and poster with Expert by Experience, Mrs Libby Humphris.  Zoë's research interests include co-productive approaches, Shared Decision Making, women's health, and results dissemination.

A review of coproduction interventions in family planning and preconception care for women with inflammatory arthritis.