Abstract
BackgroundMigrant mothers in developed countries often experience more complicated pregnancy outcomes and less fewer women access preventive gynecology services. To enlighten health care providers to potential barriers, the objective of this paper is to explore barriers to reproductive health services in Geneva described by migrant women from a qualitative perspective.MethodsIn this qualitative study, thirteen focus groups (FG) involving 78 women aged 18 to 66 years were conducted in seven languages. All the FG discussions were audio-recorded and later transcribed. The data was classified, after which the main themes and sub-themes were manually extracted and analyzed.ResultsBarriers were classified either into structural or personal barriers aiming to describe factors influencing the accessibility of reproductive health services vs. those influencing client satisfaction. The five main themes that emerged were financial accessibility, language barriers, real or perceived discrimination, lack of information and embarrassment.ConclusionStructural improvements which might meet the needs of the emergent extremely diverse population are the (1) provision of informative material that is easy to understand and available in multiple languages, (2) provision of sensitive cultural training including competence skill for all health professionals, (3) provision of specifically trained nurses or social assistance to guide migrants through the health system and (4) inclusion of monitoring and evaluation programs for the prevention of personal and systemic discrimination.
Highlights
Migrant mothers in developed countries often experience more complicated pregnancy outcomes and less fewer women access preventive gynecology services
The objective of this paper was to explore barriers to services for reproductive health (RH) in Geneva described by migrant women from a qualitative perspective
The aim of our study was to identify barriers to access reproductive health services by migrant women in Geneva and to understand if the community played a role in addressing those barriers
Summary
Migrant mothers in developed countries often experience more complicated pregnancy outcomes and less fewer women access preventive gynecology services. To enlighten health care providers to potential barriers, the objective of this paper is to explore barriers to reproductive health services in Geneva described by migrant women from a qualitative perspective. Migrants move to high-income countries for a variety of reasons. The International Office of Migration reported in 2015 that more than one billion people in the world are migrants, among which 48% are women [1]. In Switzerland, the foreign-born population has greatly increased, and the canton of Geneva is among those with the highest migrant population. In 2016, 41% of the residents in the canton of Geneva had a nationality other than Swiss [2]
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