Health Promotion in Midwifery: Principles and Practice

The fourth edition of Health Promotion in Midwifery explores the principles of health promotion within the practical context of midwifery. It clearly outlines and discusses the midwife’s role in health promotion, linking theory, and practice.

This thoroughly updated new edition considers recent changes and developments in midwifery practice and public health. It explores essential topics such as infant feeding, smoking, mental health, behaviour change, models for health promotion, violence and abuse, and sexual health promotion and includes seven entirely new chapters. These new additions reflect the need to improve inequalities in care for service users from a range of backgrounds such as for clients from racially diverse communities, clients from the LGBT+ communities, and migrant and displaced clients. Further chapters, such as those looking at public health in a global world, vaccinations in pregnancy, and self-care for midwives, meet needs highlighted by the recent pandemic and its aftermath.

Text boxes throughout ensure the text is accessible and user-friendly, and case studies and summaries put the material in a practical context. Further reading sections encourage readers to further research and reflect on their own practice. This textbook is essential reading for all midwives, student midwives, health visitors, and other health care professionals in maternity care education and practice.

Jan Bowden is an experienced lecturer in midwifery at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care, King’s College London, and an external examiner. She is passionate about the role of the midwife in public health and health promotion, contraception, and sexual health, including abortion, FGM, and women’s health. She is currently involved in a project to develop the academic literacy skills of midwifery students.

Sam Bassett is the head of the Department of Education and lead midwife for education at King’s College London. As an experienced midwife, her specialist areas of interest are maternal medical complexities, midwifery emergencies, and maternal high-dependency care. Clinical midwifery practice remains central to Sam’s work, and she continues to contribute nationally to the development of key guidelines/publications, instruct on courses such as NLS, and represent midwifery on courses such as mMOET.