Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 79 of the policy paper entitled Women's Health Strategy for England, CP 736, published on 30 August 2022, whether his Department has taken recent steps to support research on the efficacy of (a) continuity of carer in pregnancy and (b) other practice models.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funds a policy research unit on maternal and neonatal health and care. The NIHR funds a range of research on maternal and neonatal health focusing on the safety of services and the national maternity ambition to halve maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths and brain injury by 2025. The NIHR expects to recommission the policy research unit to continue this work. Applications are being reviewed and it is expected that the unit will be operational from 2024.

The NIHR has also funded research into care pathways in pregnancies occurring after stillbirth or neonatal death and evaluations of models of care, best practice and pathways for specific groups, such as those dependent on drugs and their infants and those with type 2 diabetes