Registered midwife and senior lecturer in the Dunedin School of Medicine Dr Pauline Dawson is doing a monthly pop-up clinic at the Tokanui Health Centre.
With deep roots in the area, Dr Dawson said she saw there was a need for natal services in the remote rural location.
"I was hearing stories of people ... feeling quite isolated, and perhaps not being able to travel, and sort of slipping through the cracks in these communities," she said.
The lecturer said she did her master’s thesis on people travelling to give birth, and that even before and after giving birth, travelling long distance for care can be hard.
Travelling for care could be a barrier, she said, meaning women are not always able to involve their whole whanau.
Also, not everybody can drive and it takes time out of busy rural people’s lives.
"You’ve gotta have petrol, you’ve gotta have a car, and not all rural people are rich farmers. We’re talking about quite a diverse population. Not everybody can do that, so it’s a bit of a burden."
Dr Dawson is also treating the pop-up clinic as a research opportunity to see what rural people want and need.
She can also cover sexual, contraception and other women’s health areas and, as an experienced educator, she will be teaching the district nurses, too.
In the broader Catlins area, there were only about 20 births per year, which Dr Dawson said was not enough to have a full-time midwife.
She also hopes to take the pressure and travel cost off midwives, often located in Invercargill and Gore, and to act as a conduit between them and the expectant mothers.
The researcher is test-driving this model in Tokanui and then hoping to get more funding to look at other areas and see if there are differences.
Access to care for rural communities is a "long held interest" for Dr Dawson, and she is interested in finding long-term ways to sustain it.
"Part of the bigger piece of this research is actually how could we do this as a sustainable model?"
