Dr Karin Hammarberg is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She is a Registered Nurse with 20 years’ experience as clinical co-ordinator of IVF programs. Karin’s main research interests are fertility and preconception health promotion; the psychosocial aspects of infertility and infertility treatment; the health and development of children born as a result of assisted conception; and women’s health.
HPBL
Nothing About Us Without Us
Preconception education, counselling and care – prior to a first or subsequent pregnancy – are the missing links in supporting healthier women, healthier pregnancies and improved birth outcomes. In my first blog for this series, I talked about increased access to affordable, effective contraception and how this was not the ‘magic bullet’ I thought it…
The Best Answers Come From Asking the Right Questions
I came of age just as birth control made it possible to be sexually active without becoming pregnant. Quite by serendipity, this was when I was hired to coordinate an alternative education program for pregnant teens. Six years, and six hundred pregnant teens later, my feelings, experiences and values coalesced into a lifelong commitment to…
Spotlighting a Blind Spot
In March 2022, the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland conducted an online survey about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). This was a Year 1 activity of Healthier Pregnancies, Better Lives (HPBL) – a QNIS programme supported by Cattanach and The National Lottery Community Fund. All community nurses and midwives anywhere in Scotland were eligible to participate…
What Invisibility Looks Like
In March 2022, the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland conducted an online survey about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). This was a Year 1 activity of Healthier Pregnancies, Better Lives (HPBL) – a QNIS programme supported by Cattanach and The National Lottery Community Fund. All community nurses and midwives anywhere in Scotland were eligible to participate…
Speaking About Drinking
In March 2022, the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland conducted an online survey about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). This was a Year 1 activity of Healthier Pregnancies, Better Lives (HPBL) – a QNIS programme supported by Cattanach and The National Lottery Community Fund. All community nurses and midwives anywhere in Scotland were eligible to participate…
FASD is becoming more of a concern for community nurses and midwives
In March 2022, the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland conducted an online survey about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). This was a Year 1 activity of Healthier Pregnancies, Better Lives (HPBL) – a QNIS programme supported by Cattanach and The National Lottery Community Fund. All community nurses and midwives anywhere in Scotland were eligible to participate…
Preconception health was a Ruairidh success!
Some transitions are more than memorable; they are life-changing. Graduating from university last year would have been a treasured memory under any circumstances, and yet, what made it transformational wasn’t that I achieved a first-class honours degree in Food Nutrition and Health at Abertay University. It was Ruairidh’s birth. With my degree in one hand…
Vitamin D: Scotland’s much-needed sunshine supplement
This blog is co-authored by Fiona MacKay, a retired nurse who worked for Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service for nearly 20 years and is now working as a vaccinator in NHS Lothian, and Helga Rhein, a retired Edinburgh GP, who worked at Muirhouse Medical Group, Access Practice and latterly at Sighthill Health Centre, before volunteering…
Physical activity before the first or next pregnancy
Dr Zhong Eric Chen, Reproductive Health Researcher and Fitness Instructor is a member of the Healthier Pregnancies, Better Lives steering group. His blog tackles the importance of physical activity in relation to pregnancy and pre-conception health. In writing my first-ever blog, I acknowledge the possible sensitivity in talking about physical activity, weight, (in)fertility, pregnancies, and…