Saraswathi Vedam

PhD, RM, FACNM, Sci D (hc)

Affiliate Investigator, BC Children's Hospital
Investigator, Women’s Health Research Institute
Affiliate Investigator, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute

Saraswathi Vedam is Lead Investigator of the Birth Place Lab and Professor of Midwifery at University of British Columbia in Canada. Her scholarly work includes several community-based participatory action research projects on health equity in perinatal services. She worked with service users to develop 3 new quality measures: The Mistreatment in Childbirth (MIST) index, the Mothers’ Autonomy in Decision Making (MADM) scale and the Mothers on Respect (MOR) index, which received the 2017 National Quality Forum Innovation Prize. These accountability measures have now been applied in 65 countries at the institutional, health system, and country levels in research and quality improvement initiatives. They were applied in the Giving Voice to Mothers Study, the first national study to report on significant differences by race, type of provider, and place of birth in experience of mistreatment in the US. Dr. Vedam also led the Access and Integration Maternity care Mapping (AIMM) Study that demonstrated the impact of integration of midwives on maternal-newborn outcomes. She is currently PI for the RESPCCT Study examining experience of childbearing care across Canada, and senior co-investigator of the Birth Includes Us study, both focused on amplifying voices from communities that are seldom heard.