Library Resources for Nursing of Women and Infants
Finding Publications and Research Articles
Information about the women's health and the health of birthing people can be found in many places- formally published research is accessible through Penn library subscriptions to leading journals in medicine, nursing, and interdisciplinary topics, as well as through research literature databases linked from the Penn Holman Biotech Commons homepage at https://www.library.upenn.edu/biomed.
Databases in health sciences literature aggregate articles from a variety of journals that are carefully selected to meet standards for prestige and quality. Different databases may be specifically disciplinary or may reflect a range of multidisciplinary interests. The well known database Pubmed, for instance, includes articles from about 5,000 journals publishing in life sciences, clinical medicine, public health, dentistry, and veterinary sciences. While there is substantial content from nursing journals in Pubmed, the CINAHL database provides access to a similar number of journals, but with a specific focus on nursing and allied health professions. Identifying the most relevant evidence for your research interests may involve searching in several databases and combining results using research protocols such as PRISMA and web-based tools for citation management.
The full list of health sciences databases is available at this link: Key List of Health and Life Science Databases
Other databases available from Penn Libraries include journal content and other material from humanities, social sciences, and political science-focused sources in Women's Studies and Gender Studies.
Significant Journals in Maternal-child Nursing
- Birth: Issues in Perinatal CareMultidisciplinary journal for nurses, midwives, physicians, doulas, lactation educators and policy makers.
- Journal of Family NursingOfficial journal of the International Family Nursing Association.
- Journal of Midwifery and Women's HealthOfficial journal of the America College of Nurse-Midwives
- MCN: American Journal of Maternal Child NursingPublishes research for nurses working in perinatal, neonatal, midwifery, and pediatric specialties.
- Nursing for Women's Health (AWHONN)Official journal of AWHONN (Association of Women, Health Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses)
- Women and BirthOfficial journal of the Australian College of Midwives.
Data Sources
Center for Disease Control
- National Center for Health Statistics: Births and Natality
- Division of Reproductive Health: Data and Statistics
- Birth Defects: Data and Statistics
- Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System
- PRAMStat (Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System)
- Urban Institute, Health Policy Center: State-by-State Health Insurance Coverage among Women of Reproductive Age in 2017Fact sheets on health insurance coverage among women of reproductive age (15 to 44) in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Using data from the 2017 American Community Survey, these fact sheets provide details on the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of women with the highest uninsurance rates in each state and the District of Columbia. In 40 states, the fact sheets also provide the state-specific breakdown of potential eligibility for financial assistance obtaining coverage among uninsured women in 2017.
Penn Organizations/Initiatives
Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Initiatives
- Maternal Mortality in Philadelphia, 2010-2012A report that describes and discusses maternal deaths, 2010-2012, that were reviewed by the Philadelphia Maternal Mortality Review team.
- Maternity Care CoalitionThe mission of Maternity Care Coalition is to improve the health and well-being of pregnant women and parenting families, and enhance school readiness for children 0-3.
- New Voices for Reproductive JusticeNew Voices promotes the complete health and well-being of Black women and girls in the Greater Pittsburgh Region. Our definition includes eight dimensions of health: physical, emotional, spiritual, cultural, political, economic, environmental and social.
- PA Department of Health: Breastfeeding ProgramThe Pennsylvania Breastfeeding Awareness and Support Program was started in 2004 to increase the number of new mothers who choose breastfeeding as their long-term infant feeding method.
- PA Department of Health: Family Planning ProgramThe Family Planning Program provides support to the statewide family planning clinics operated by Pennsylvania’s four regional Family Health Councils.
- PA Perinatal Quality CollaborativeThe Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative (PA PQC) was launched in April 2019, with a focus on reducing maternal mortality and improving care for pregnant and postpartum women and newborns affected by opioids.
- Philadelphia: Philadelphia Maternal and Infant Community Action Network (Summary Report)A report from a group of many different local organizations working together to lower the rate of infant mortality (November 2018).
- Philadelphia Alliance for Labor SupportTraining program for people interested in providing hospital-based birth support for childbearing people who would otherwise be unable to afford birth support
- People's Paper Co-opPhiladelphia arts and activism women-led co-op working to advance justice for women reentering after incarceration.
- Philadelphia FIGHT Women's Health ProjectSupport groups, educational programs, and multidisciplinary care for Philadelphia women with HIV
New Articles on Reproductive Justice (Updated daily from PubMed)
Manage Citations & Create Bibliographies
Citation Management tools are available through and/or supported by librarians at the different Penn Libraries. These tools enable you to efficiently export relevant research articles from databases, categorize and store libraries of full-text articles, and insert and format citations in written articles through plug-ins to word-processing software.
Access to RefWorks is provided to all members of the Penn community. Zotero, Papers, and EndNote are other widely used and popular ciationms management tools.