Improving maternity care in the Dominican Republic: a pilot study of a community-based participatory research action plan by an international healthcare team.

This article is a report of the process and results of a feasibility pilot study to improve the quality of maternity care in a sample of 31 women and their newborns delivering in a public, tertiary hospital in the Dominican Republic. The pilot study was the first "action step" taken as a result of a formative, community-based participatory research (CBPR) study conducted between 2008 and 2010 by an interdisciplinary, international partnership of U.S.

Community-based participatory research and the challenges of qualitative analysis enacted by lay, nurse, and academic researchers.

There are multiple challenges in adhering to the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), especially when there is a wide range of academic preparation within the research team. This is particularly evident in the analysis phase of qualitative research. We describe the process of conducting qualitative analysis of data on community perceptions of public maternity care in the Dominican Republic, in a cross-cultural, CBPR study.