Midwifery Access for Indigenous and Racialized Women in Rural Alberta: A Rapid Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of this capstone is to examine barriers to rural midwifery access in Alberta and to identify equity-centred, evidence-informed policy strategies that the provincial government can implement. This project is guided by the research question: What policy strategies can the Alberta Government implement to improve equitable access to midwifery care in rural Alberta, for Indigenous and racialized communities? Using a rapid review methodology, the paper synthesizes findings from peer-reviewed and grey literature to highlight system-level barriers and policy opportunities. This methodology employs a critical rural equity lens that regards race and place as intersecting, rather than parallel, determinants of access to health services. Preliminary findings suggest that effective strategies include targeted funding models for rural midwifery, Indigenous midwifery models, expansion of Indigenous-led and community-based training programs, reforms to professional scope and billing practices, and stronger provincial accountability for equitable service distribution. These findings are anticipated to support the development of an inclusive and sustainable rural midwifery strategy in Alberta. This capstone contributes to policy discussions on maternal healthcare equity by emphasizing the importance of addressing rural midwifery access not only geographically but through an intersectional lens that considers the specific experiences of Indigenous and racialized communities in rural Alberta.
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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 | 0.011 | 0.021 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".