Project: Expecting a child in Arabic and Swedish! Norm-critical innovative design for interactive antenatal care

Funding organisation: Vinnova

Project description

Conditions for health care in Sweden are unequal; a vulnerable group is foreign-born women (here Arabic-speaking women), with higher mortality for mothers and children in pregnancy and childbirth.

Midwives in a pilot study expressed a wish for a touchscreen tablet as an aid to linguistic and cultural understanding. An app of norm-critical design will be developed for interactive communication and information in antenatal care. A norm- critical analysis with double reflexivity is justified, since the way foreign-born people are viewed in Swedish care can be part of the problem.

The norm critique is geared to ethnicity (language & culture), class (education) and gender. Norm criticism focuses mainly on equality between women of different ethnicity. We problematise the approaches, which gives normality in antenatal care. The aim is more equal and communicative ANC and greater patient safety.

The study is conducted in collaboration with midwives and Arabic-speaking women. A touchscreen tablet will supplement interpreters, since the women can talk freely with midwives about sensitive subjects when no interpreter is present. An app with pictures, films and spoken words can increase understanding, especially in illiterate women. The app will explain what happens in care encounters, and why. The norm critique is strategic and innovative.

The innovation process starts with existing apps; we analyse in workshops, order a prototype app, test it in antenatal care and make it more user-friendly for Arabic-speaking women and midwives. Methods used are interviews, text and discourse analysis, multimodal and norm-critical analysis with double reflexivity (Swedish and Arabic). Quality assurance of the app will take the form of evaluation. It will then be spread to be used by antenatal care all over Sweden.