Health in Early Life and Parenthood
Our research aims to promote health and welfare in the early stages of life. We are interested in families expecting a child, prenatal period, birth, parent-infant closeness and breastfeeding as well as toddlers, school-aged children and parenthood.
The concept of family-centered care is an underlying framework in our research. We use different methodological approaches and aim for multidisciplinary research. For example, with the support of information technology we have developed modern data collection methods suitable for both health care professionals and parents of newborn infants.
Substudies
SCENE is a multi-disciplinary group of international professionals that aims to improve parents’ and infants’ experiences and outcomes of neonatal care. The focus of the SCENE collaboration is to undertake research into how and why parent-infant physical and emotional closeness varies in neonatal units, within and between countries; the short- and long-term effects of closeness and separation on infants, parents and the infant-parent dyad; as well as how to optimise parental and infant health and wellbeing.
A key goal of the SCENE collaboration is to identify, construct, implement and evaluate best practice to support physical and emotional parent-infant closeness during neonatal care.
The aim of this project is to develop future solutions for assessing and monitoring family centered care related concepts and outcomes in research and knowledge translation. This work will involve systematic reviews of the currently used research measures, IT solutions and monitoring systems. These reviews and empirical evidence will provide the basis for the development of new innovative IT tools.
Read more: http://iot4health.utu.fi
The Impact of Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative to Breastfeeding, Breastfeeding Counselling and Breastfeeding Attitudes
The Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) was launched by WHO and UNICEF over 25 years ago aiming to protect, promote and support breastfeeding. The BFHI is an effective intervention in promoting the duration of breastfeeding. Four birth hospitals in Finland are certified as ‘Baby-friendly’, but no previous studies have been published about the effectiveness of BFHI in Finnish settings.
The impact of Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to breastfeeding, breastfeeding counselling and breastfeeding attitudes will be examined in Satakunta Central Hospital, Finland. The baseline measurement will be conducted before the implementation of BFHI in the spring of 2017 and second measurement will be conducted in 2019 after the certification process. Both staff members and breastfeeding mothers will be recruited in the study. The main outcomes are the duration of breastfeeding and breastfeeding attitudes.
Measuring compliance with the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative for Neonatal Wards (Neo-BFHI)
Country survey leaders in Finland: Hannakaisa Niela-Vilén, Aino Ezeonodo, Leena Hannula
Neo-BFHI is the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiation (BFHI) expanded to neonatal wards. The Neo-BFHI aims to promote breastfeeding in neonatal units addressing the special situation of preterm and sick infants and their families. The main objective of the proposed evaluation is to assess compliance with the Neo-BFHI recommendations in neonatal wards in a set of countries/ regions. Countries that have confirmed their participation are: the province of Quebec, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland. The evaluation will use a cross-sectional survey to measure compliance with the policies and practices outlined in the Neo-BFHI from the perspective of managers and professionals working in the neonatal ward.
Pain in Early Life (PEARL) is a group of researchers dedicated to better pain management for infants and children.
Read more: http://pearl.direct/index.html
The goal of the Close Collaboration with Parents Training Program is to develop family centered care culture on the unit level by training all of the nurses, doctors, and other staff of a neonatal intensive care unit.
The research evaluates both immediate and long-term effect of the Close Collaboration with Parents Training Program from the perspectives of child, parents, and staff.
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