10093652Addressing Health Inequalities in Maternity Care through Psychosocial Risk ScreeningClosedInvestment AcceleratorInnovate UKIt is unacceptable that problems of high maternal deaths and severe disease in Black and Asian women persist today, with unchanging rates since 2014\. According to a UK and Ireland enquiry, 54% of poor maternal outcomes were not related to childbirth complications, and gaps in pregnancy care has been shown to be the second leading cause of maternal deaths. Therefore, improving the management of pre-birth risk factors and widening appropriate access to care will significantly reduce adverse outcomes for women. However, even when pregnancy care is received, there are well-reported inconsistencies in the thoroughness of risk assessments, particularly on the psychological & social (psychosocial) aspects of a presenting woman, as these are not as detectable, and women are not as forthcoming within the limitations of hospital appointments. In this project, we will advance the development of a novel maternal psychosocial screening tool, MpRisk, so that healthcare professionals can more accurately assess and stratify pregnancies, identifying prenatal women at risk of adverse perinatal outcomes and supporting personalised care decisions. The MpRisk algorithm will be trained using additional maternity datasets from one of the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse regions in England. We will also drive our NHS adoption strategy through business development activities including health economics and dissemination. It is expected that timely and effective insights generation and identification of patients at-risk will significantly help prevent poor outcomes during and after pregnancy.