Building the Evidence-base to Support Rural Maternity Health Services Policy and Planning

Dr. Stefan Grzybowski is a family physician clinical investigator and co director of the Centre for Rural Health Research within the Vancouver Coastal health Research institute. He is co-Principal Investigator of the Rural Maternity New Emerging Team, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and also co directs the British Columbia Rural and Remote Health Research Network, a Health of Population Network funded by the Michael Smith foundation. Prior to moving to Vancouver in 1994, Dr. Grzybowski practiced for 12 years as a family physician on the Queen Charlotte Islands/Haida Gwaii.

Dr. Grzybowski’s research has focused on building an evidence base supporting sustainable maternity health services for rural parturient women, translating this evidence into policy and practice and building research capacity for primary care clinician researchers. His interest in rural health services research was fostered by his experiences in facing the challenges of providing limited maternity services in an isolated hospital on the Queen Charlotte Islands without local access to Cesarean Section. His current projects include developing a Logic Model for sustainable rural maternity care in three isolated BC communities, investigating mechanisms in which GP surgery can be supported in BC, measuring population based maternal and newborn outcomes for rural service catchment areas across BC, and measuring stress associated with pregnancy for parturient women living in rural communities.