Lived experiences of women with low birth weight infants in the Solomon Islands: A descriptive qualitative study

Lydia S Kaforau; Gizachew A Tessema; Hugo Bugoro; Gavin Pereira; Jonine Jancey

doi:10.1371/journal.pgph.0001008

Lived experiences of women with low birth weight infants in the Solomon Islands: A descriptive qualitative study

PLOS Glob Public Health. 2022 Dec 7;2(12):e0001008. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0001008. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Lydia S Kaforau^{1

2}, Gizachew A Tessema^{1

3}, Hugo Bugoro², Gavin Pereira^{1

4

5}, Jonine Jancey^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Curtin School of Population Health, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.
² School of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences, Solomon Islands National University, Honiara, Solomon Islands.
³ School of Public Health, The University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
⁴ Centre for Fertility and Health (CeFH), Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway.
⁵ enAble Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.

Abstract

Every year, around 20 million women worldwide give birth to low birth weight (LBW) infants, with majority of these births occurring in low-and middle-income countries, including the Solomon Islands. Few studies have explored the pregnancy lived experience of women who deliver LBW infants. The aim of the study is to understand the lived experience of women in the Solomon Islands who gave birth to LBW infants by exploring their personal (socio-demographic and health), behavioural, social and environmental contexts. We used a qualitative descriptive approach and purposely selected 18 postnatal women with LBW infants in the Solomon Islands for an in-depth interview. All data were analysed using thematic analysis in NVivo. We identified six themes reported as being related to LBW: health issues, diet and nutrition, substance use, domestic violence, environmental conditions and antenatal care. Our findings suggest that women in the Solomon Islands are exposed to various personal, behavioural, social and environmental risk factors during pregnancy that can impact birth outcomes, particularly LBW. We recommend further research should be redirected to look at the factors/themes identified in the interviews.

Copyright: © 2022 Kaforau et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Grants and funding

GP was supported with funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council Project and Investigator Grants #1099655 and #1173991 and the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme #262700. GAT was supported with funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Grant #1195716. LSK is a recipient of the Australia Award scholarship from the Department of Foreign Affairs. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.