South Community Birth Program

About

The SCBP is designed to bring pregnancy and birth back to a community-based, peer-supported, primary care experience. More specific goals include improving the health outcomes of women and their families.

Story

The South Community Birth Program (SCBP) was established in October 2003 to pilot a unique maternity care program situated in the South Community area of Vancouver, British Columbia. At BC Women’s hospital, the Head of Family Practice, Sue Harris, and the Head of Midwifery, Lee Saxell, received funding through the Federal Government’s Primary Health Care Transition Funds, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and B.C. Women’s Hospital to pilot an innovative, collaborative, multidisciplinary program. Family physicians, midwives, community health nurses, and doulas all provide care in a community-based, culturally-appropriate, and woman-centered manner during pregnancy, birth and the newborn period. The SCBP is designed to improve the health outcomes of pregnant women in the underserved community of South Vancouver. This is the first such multidisciplinary program of its kind in Canada.

The SCBP has expanded into a space on 41st and Fraser Street that includes a large room for Connecting Pregnancy (CP) group care meetings. Women have the choice of receiving their care in CP groups with a doctor or midwife and a nurse, or in individual one-on-one visits. Women also have the option of being assigned a doula for support during labour and birth. To date, the SCBP has 44 trained doulas and among them they speak 24 languages as well as English. Women are matched with doulas with whom they can converse in their first languages.

Since 2003 the SCBP has cared for more than 1700 women, many of whom are new immigrants to Canada.