Synopsis:

Patient safety frameworks often emphasize empowerment and engagement as critical to safety but overlook how interpersonal adversities – such as dismissed concerns, inadequate education, and cultural insensitivity – undermine these factors. Black families disproportionately experience interpersonal adversities during perinatal care, which undermine trust, reduce engagement, and perpetuate adverse outcomes. Yet, these adversities are rarely framed within patient safety frameworks as contributors to racial disparities in maternal and infant health. Addressing interpersonal adversities as safety risks could provide a novel pathway to reduce
racial disparities in maternal and infant health.

Supportive interventions that focus on empowerment and health knowledge may promote patient safety by equipping individuals with the confidence and skills needed to advocate for their needs and engage with healthcare providers—tools to address interpersonal adversities both reactively and proactively. However, the potential of such interventions to mitigate interpersonal safety risks and enhance perinatal care safety remains underexplored. My dissertation aims to address critical gaps in understanding patient safety for Black women in perinatal care by:

● Operationalizing interpersonal safety risks for Black women in prenatal care through an integrative literature review, with the intention of establishing their relevance as measurable components of patient safety
● Examining whether and how empowerment-based intervention processes address interpersonal safety risks for Black women in perinatal care.

This research will expand patient safety frameworks and recommendations to include relational dimensions of care that are highly relevant for Black birthing people. Ultimately, this work will provide actionable insights into advancing perinatal safety and reducing racial disparities in maternal and infant health.

Thursday, February 20th, 2025
12:00 PM

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