Q&A with research midwife Arancha de la Horra

Arancha de la Horra is leading The Global Health Network’s impact assessment of the INTERGROWTH-21^st standards and resources. After working as a nurse in areas such as community, renal transplants and ambulance services, she decided to train as a midwife 17 years ago. She gained clinical experience in the high-risk pregnancy services before moving to clinical governance in her role as audit and quality midwife. Looking for a new challenge, she joined the research midwifery team in Oxford and now she’s on a secondment at The Global Health Network.

Can you briefly describe your role as a research midwife

As a research midwife, I lead on a group of research studies covering different clinical topics from experimental pre-eclampsia treatments to prevention of diabetes type-1 in neonates.

Currently I am working on the INTERGROWTH-21^st impact assessment that aims to find out how the INTERGROWTH-21^st standards and resources have been used across the globe and what impact they have had on research and clinical practice.

What inspired you to work in health research?

My first inspiration was a collaboration project between maternity and cardiovascular medicine in my local hospital. We were looking into the long-term cardiovascular effects for women after having had pre-eclampsia. Seeing the translation into clinical practice later was very rewarding.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I really enjoy liaising with people from all over the world and listening to their experiences of using the different resources from INTERGROWTH-21^st and The global Health Network.

Finally, if you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?

This year I have been part of the NIHR Advanced Leadership Program and during our third module, I came across this quote from Mahatma Gandhi that really resonated with me: “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.”

Read more about the INTERGRWOTH-21^st impact assessment here: Survey launched to understand clinical and research impact of INTERGROWTH-21st tools after 120,000 downloads