PURPOSE:
This literature review explores strategies for the effective implementation of public health interventions in community midwifery.

DISCUSSION:
Community midwives are in a unique position to influence the success of the public health agenda during the perinatal period and therefore impact maternal morbidity and mortality rates. Searches included CINAHL Plus, Ovid Medline and PubMed, SCOPUS and the Grey literature using key words smoking cessation, obesity, overweight, midwifery, antenatal care, pregnancy, public health, lifestyle, saving babies lives. Community midwives in the United Kingdom provide maternity care throughout the childbirth continuum, predominantly in the community setting (RCM, 2019) . The community setting includes community clinics and hubs, birth centres and individual’s homes (Basu et al., 2014, RCM, 2017). Community midwives are often the first health care professional a pregnant individual will encounter in maternity services, providing care through models that include team midwifery, continuity of care teams and/or specialist midwifery teams (RCM, 2019, NHS, 2023a, RCM, 2017, Cutter, 2021).

EVIDENCE WHERE RELEVANT:
Public health interventions in community midwifery include smoking cessation, healthy weight management, vaccine uptake, and strategies concerning intimate partner violence (RCM, 2017, NHS, 2023b). Community midwives, alongside the multi-agency / multi-disciplinary team, are therefore vital in efforts to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality rates in the short, medium and long-term. There are however challenges to implementation of the public health agenda in community midwifery including pressures on health care services such as time/capacity, educational needs of midwives and training (RCM, 2017, Greenhalgh, 2018, Trenchard-Mabere, 2016, Hyer et al., 2023). Facilitators to implementation of the public health agenda in community midwifery are system-wide, at the macro, meso and micro-level (Greenhalgh, 2018).

KEY MESSAGE:
Community midwives are in a unique position to apply public health interventions. Through effective models of implementation including education, community midwives are well placed to influence rates of morbidity and mortality in the perinatal period. Poster session 2 (Group A)