The project “ORAMMA: Operational Refugee And Migrant Maternal Approach” has a vision to develop an operational and strategic approach in order to promote safe motherhood, to improve access and delivery of maternal healthcare for refugee and migrant women and to improve maternal health equality within European Union. Moreover, the project will increase awareness, commitment and action towards improving maternal health of refugees in EU. There is an increasing need for a prompt, coordinated, and effective response for all migrant and refugee pregnant and lactating women with newborn babies. Migrant and refugee women face specific health risks and challenges during perinatal period that need to be dealt by well-trained multidisciplinary teams of health professional experts since they are characterized by a complex physical, psychological and mental state of health. The majority of the refugee pregnant women, their families and their communities are not empowered to be healthy, do not always have adequate capacities to provide appropriate care during pregnancy or when the new baby has arrived, neither are they able to make healthy decisions and act upon those decisions, including the decision to seek care when needed. There is a lack of empower manifest in a number of levels while additionally gender constraints may prevent some refugee women from expressing the need for and obtaining care during perinatal period. The ORAMMA project will develop, pilot implement and evaluate by comparative analysis an integrated and cost-effective approach on safe motherhood provision for migrant and refugee women, taking into consideration (a) best practices, (b) the special risks and characteristics of the target group and (c) the transferability of the model in different healthcare systems across EU: from camps sites in Greece, to National Health Services in the UK and to community-based model in Netherlands.
The general objective of the ORAMMA project is to promote safe pregnancy and childbirth through efficient provision of, access to, and use of quality skilled care for all migrant and refugee women and their newborn babies. Moreover the project aims to strengthen the refuge maternal healthcare in primary care settings, and to promote community-based healthcare models for migrant and refugee populations.
The underpinning philosophy of the project lies in core values and principles that will be incorporated into the project activities and deliverables:
♦ Promotion of the rights of women and newborns
♦ Promotion of gender equality as the basis of maternal and newborn health approaches
♦ Ensuring equity in access to quality care, regardless of socio-economic status, with special attention to the poor and populations that are currently underserved, ensuring that all women survive and are healthy during pregnancy and childbirth and that newborn babies have a healthy start in life.
♦ Ensuring responsiveness to the needs of the migrant and refugee communities
♦ Ensuring the effective continuum of care that includes all maternal and newborn care including timely and appropriate management of pregnancy related complications
♦ A sustainable approach for maternal healthcare and safe motherhood
♦ Promotion of primary care
♦ Adoption of a multisectoral approach because of the complex set of interaction between many factors that influence refugee maternal and perinatal health outcomes
♦Development of partnerships in order to increase the availability of resources and maximize their effective use, reducing unnecessary duplication of activities for improving maternal and newborn health
♦ Building upon on existing initiatives and activities to maximize use of resources and synergies.
Work packages
WP1: Coordination of the project
Description: Actions undertaken to manage the project and to make sure that it is implemented as planned.
WP2: Dissemination of the project
Description: Actions undertaken to ensure that the results and deliverables of the project will be made available to the target groups.
WP3: Evaluation of the project
Description: Actions undertaken to verify if the project is being implemented as planned and reaches the objectives.
Actions undertaken to assess the effectiveness, efficacy, transferability, sustainability of the proposed model as well as to estimate the potential impact of its implementation and provide policy recommendations.
WP4: State of the art and ORAMMA approach development
Description: Actions undertaken to identify best practices & existing approaches/processes for the perinatal care of migrants and refugee woman and assess the national context and the present state of the participating counties.
Actions undertaken to develop the model/approach of the perinatal healthcare for migrant and refugee women, and the accompanying implementation tools.
WP5: Community capacity building and empowerment of migrant and refugee women
Description: Actions undertaken for community capacity building and empowering of migrant and refugee women.
WP6: Pilot implementation and assessment
Description: Actions undertaken to implement and pilot test the proposed model in three different European settings: in camps/hotspots in Greece, through the NHS in the UK and in community-based services in the Netherlands.
