Maternity services are provided in the purpose-built Women and Children’s Hospital at the Hull Royal Infirmary site. We provide care to over 5,000 parents and babies every year. You can choose a birth that suits your circumstances at home, in the Fatima Allam Birth Centre, or in the labour ward under midwife or obstetric-led care. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit provides tertiary neonatal care for babies born at any gestation who require medical treatment. More information about all our services can be found on the Maternity Services pages.
Born and Bred in (BaBi) Hull and East Yorkshire is part of the BaBi Network electronic birth cohort studies. BaBi Hull and East Yorkshire uses routinely-collected data about parents and their babies to explore and improve health and wellbeing of our families.
People booked for pregnancy care at Hull Royal Infirmary will be invited to become part of the study by one of our midwives during routine antenatal appointments. If happy to participate, health researchers will join data about parent and child, looking into ways to improve healthcare and services through research and planning in Hull and East Yorkshire and beyond.
Our research midwives can be contacted on hyp-tr.research.midwife@nhs.net or 01482311901.
Meet the Team
Principal Investigator: Helen Birks
Helen is the Principal Investigator for BaBi Hull and East Yorkshire and is the Research, Development and Innovation Matron for Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
Helen has a wealth of both clinical and research experience, and has had a wide and varied career holding a range of nursing and midwifery roles over her 30 years with the National Health Service. Helen is also a Nursing and Midwifery Council Registered Lecturer and holds an MSc in Education.
She has spent time in Higher Education supporting the development and education of student nurses and student midwives, and has a keen interest in developing students for the future and engaging students in research.
Helen has also held a range of specialist research roles within the trust since 2010 including Research Midwife, Academic Oncology Trials Unit Manager and Quality Assurance Research Monitor.
Helen currently leads a large nursing and midwifery research team, and engages with a range of stakeholders across the locality, all of whom are invested in improving access to research opportunities for families and patients, and delivering high quality research care that improves care.
Helen’s current research interests are maternal and child health, domestic violence, families’ experiences of postnatal care services, teenage pregnancy, social disadvantage, and childbirth-related PTSD.
Research Midwife: Sarah Collins
Sarah is a research midwife at Hull. She qualified as a general nurse in 1993 and as a midwife in 1995. Sarah has spent most of her midwifery career as a community midwife in various parts of Hull and East Yorkshire, as well as working in specialist clinics for teenage and vulnerable parents. Sarah also worked for the Local Maternity and Neonatal System as project lead for the Ask a Midwife service for two years before taking up her role as research midwife for maternity and reproductive health in Hull.
Sarah is excited to develop Hull’s participation in reproductive health research alongside the BaBi study to improve the health and wellbeing of our families.