Rachel Rowe

Rachel Rowe is a Senior Health Services Researcher in the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU).

She leads research about the safety and quality of maternity care, focussing on women who are healthy with straightforward pregnancies and on midwifery-led care.

This includes leading the UK Midwifery Study System (UKMidSS), a national research infrastructure supporting national observational studies and surveys of practice in midwifery units across the UK, which she set up in 2015; a stream of work within the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Policy Research Unit in Maternal and Neonatal Health and Care (PRU-MNHC), for which she is a co-investigator; and Listen2Baby, a three-year NIHR-funded project using experience-based co-design to improve the safety and quality of fetal monitoring for women having uncomplicated labour.  

Alongside her research, Rachel has a leading role in the NPEU's Parent, Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement activities. She led a project to develop a stage play, after birth, which uses emotion, humour and drama to engage the public with research about maternal mental health produced by the PRU-MNHC, MBRRACE-UK and the NPEU. after birth was 'highly commended' in the 2022 Vice-Chancellor's Innovation and Engagement Awards.

She also led the Listening Series, a project aimed at supporting researchers to engage with and involve people who are currently under-served by health research, which resulted in the development of a film and guidance for researchers.

Rachel has a DPhil in Public Health (University of Oxford), a background in social science and health services research, and training in epidemiology and qualitative research methods.