Dr Heike Roth

I am a Senior Lecturer and the Course Director of the Bachelor of Midwifery at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and am a UTS Bachelor of Midwifery graduate (2008). I continued on with further studies and obtained Honours (2010) as well as completed a Graduate Certificate in Adult Education (2013), Screening, Diagnostics, Pharmacology and Prescribing for Midwives (2015) and more recently a Ph.D. in Midwifery (2021). I have worked clinically as a midwife for 16 years, across all areas of midwifery practice and have been a casual lecturer at UTS since 2012.

I am passionate about supporting maternity healthcare providers and midwifery students to implement woman-centred, evidence-based care and have been an active member of the Australian College of Midwives since 2006. More recently I joined AAPEC and in 2022 was elected as midwifery advisor to AAPEC. I am very excited to be part of AAPEC’s passionate team, advocating for research and education around hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, including preeclampsia.

My Ph.D. focused on identifying knowledge gaps and exploring educational preferences amongst women and healthcare providers regarding long-term health after hypertensive disorder of pregnancy. My current post-doctoral research aims to translate findings from my Ph.D. into practice. Education that addresses long-term health risks (including mitigation thereof) has been developed (based on the findings from the PhD) and tailored to women with a history of hypertensive disorder of pregnancy as well as their healthcare providers. An education postal with a follow up reminder system is currently being implemented and tested. As a primary objective we are assessing acceptability and utility of the education and appointment reminder systems for women who have given birth at St George Hospital in Sydney. The post-doctoral research is a collaborative project between UTS, the University of NSW and funded by the Maternal, Newborn and Women’s Clinical Academic Group (MNW CAG) of Maridulu Budyari Gumal, the Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE).

Apart from my teaching role and post-doctoral research, I am also actively involved in other research projects, such as testing the utility of social networking sites to convey health information to postpartum women.