Despite concerns raised in the literature on the adverse pregnancy outcomes of women with physical disabilities, there is little information about unmet needs of women with physical disabilities during pregnancy and childbirth.
This article provides an in-depth examination of unmet health care needs during and around the time of pregnancy among a sample of women with physical disabilities. It also offers recommendations to other women with physical disabilities who are considering pregnancy.
Twenty-five phone interviews were conducted with women with physical disabilities from across the United States who had a baby in the past ten years. Individual semi-structured qualitative interviews lasting about 2 h were conducted. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using an iterative, interpretive process.
Women reported a wide range of disabling conditions. Analysis revealed three broad themes related to unmet needs during pregnancy among women with physical disabilities. They included (1) clinician knowledge and attitudes, (2) physical accessibility of health care facilities and equipment, (3) need for information related to pregnancy and postpartum supports. The women also provided recommendations to other women with disabilities who are currently pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant. Recommendations related to finding a clinician one trusts, seeking peer support, self-advocating, and preparing oneself for the baby.
This study sheds light on the unmet needs and barriers to care of women with mobility disabilities during pregnancy and childbirth. The study findings highlight the need for policy and practice recommendations for perinatal care of women with mobility disabilities.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 63. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 09 December 2025.
All research outputs
#850,833
of 33,779,198 outputs
Outputs from Disability and Health Journal
#40
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#11,618
of 444,261 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Disability and Health Journal
#1
of 20 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,779,198 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,047 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.6. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 20 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its contemporaries.
