Building Effective and Equitable Global Midwifery Collaborations: Research, Education, and Clinical Learning

The historically unidirectional movement of global health ideas, practices, and protocols from the Global North (United States, Canada, European countries, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel) to the Global South (Latin American countries, African countries, the Middle East excluding Israel and Asia countries, and Oceania excluding those previously mentioned) has displaced local practice and produced little sustainable change. Actively addressing these unintended consequences, practitioners at Yale School of Nursing in the United States formed a sustainable, mutually beneficial partnership with Makerere University College of Health Sciences and Mother Health International community birth center in Atiak, Uganda, to reduce perinatal mortality in areas with the highest burden. Goals included establishing a collaborative midwifery education and research partnership; developing an interprofessional clinical rotation; and developing a blueprint for teaching the midwifery model of care in the Global South. The partnership has successfully produced outputs including midwifery education support, research, clinical training, interprofessional capacity building, and community integration within local health care systems. Lessons learned from program design, implementation, and evaluation can inform global learning collaborations that are multidirectional and lead to more equitable midwifery collaborations.