Rural Residents’ Perinatal Experiences During the Initial Months of the COVID‐19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study in British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Many studies have explored the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on perinatal health, but few have examined the effects of the pandemic on birthing families through a rural lens. Given that the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced long-standing disparities between urban and rural communities, it is important that the significance of place on the health and wellness of rural populations is made visible. METHODS: In-depth interviews and focus groups with 16 participants from rural communities in British Columbia, Canada, were performed. Participants included those who had been pregnant or given birth after March 11, 2020. Data from the interviews and focus groups were analyzed using the principles of thematic analysis to understand the perinatal experiences of rural families during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: Analysis of the data revealed 4 major themes: perceived risk of infection, navigating uncertainty, experience of care received, and resilience and silver linings. In general, participants conceptualized rural communities as safer bubbles. Exceptions included specific vectors of risk such as tourism travel and border communities. Challenges experienced by rural families including anxiety around changing health guidelines, reduced social support, and potential loss of their partners' support at births. Additional concerns specific to rural experiences added to this burden, including fear of traveling to referral centers for care and increased difficulties accessing resources. DISCUSSION: Participants reported positive, compassionate care experiences that helped to mitigate some of the added stressors of the pandemic. These findings highlight the importance of perinatal care provision that integrates physiologic and mental health supports. This study provides a foundation for a comprehensive inquiry into the experiences of rural perinatal services during COVID-19.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".