Carol Sakala
Profiles

Carol Sakala, PhD

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Community Health Sciences - Boston University School of Public Health

sakala@bu.edu
Crosstown Center
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Biography

Carol is an experienced maternity care advocate, educator, researcher, author, and policy analyst. With a continuous focus on meeting the needs and interests of childbearing women and families, she works to

• improve the quality, outcomes, and value of maternity care
• give voice to the needs and interests of childbearing women and families
• advance evidence-based maternity care, woman- and family-centered health policies, and maternity care shared decision making
• help women navigate the maternity care system.

Carol has served on deliberative and advisory bodies of the National Quality Forum, National Committee for Quality Assurance, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Guidelines International Network, and the US Breastfeeding Committee, among others.

Carol creates resources that are widely used to improve maternity care policy, practice, education, and research. She has served as:

• co-investigator of national Listening to Mothers surveys to illuminate experiences and views of childbearing women
• member of the PregnantMe team that is creating state-of-the-science maternity care decision aids
• lead author of the “Milbank Report,” Evidence-Based Maternity Care: What It Is and What It Can Achieve (2008)
• founding author (2003-2007) of the continuing “Current Resources for Evidence-Based Practice” column, which is published jointly in 2 professional journals
• author of the “Letter from North America” column in the journal Birth from 2006 to 2012
• member of founding team and contributor to the Consumer Panel of the Cochrane Collaboration Pregnancy and Childbirth Group
• co-author of the Cochrane review, “Continuous Support for Women During Childbirth”

Carol helps foster, develop, and/or apply high-quality clinical effectiveness tools – including systematic reviews, performance measures, clinical practice guidelines, and decision aids – to help address widely recognized patterns of maternity care overuse, underuse, and practice variation.

Education

  • Boston University, PhD Field of Study: Health Policy Management
  • University of Utah, MSPH Field of Study: Public Health
  • University of Chicago, MA Field of Study: Anthropology
  • University of Chicago, BA Field of Study: Anthropology

Websites

Publications

  • Published on 10/1/2022

    Sakala C, Hernández-Cancio S, Wei R. Improving Our Maternity Care Now Through Community Birth Settings. J Perinat Educ. 2022 Oct 01; 31(4):184-187. PMID: 36277227.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 10/1/2022

    Sakala C, Hernández-Cancio S, Mackay E, Wei R. Improving Our Maternity Care Now Through Midwifery. J Perinat Educ. 2022 Oct 01; 31(4):181-183. PMID: 36277225.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 10/26/2021

    Levine A, Souter V, Sakala C. Are perinatal quality collaboratives collaborating enough? How including all birth settings can drive needed improvement in the United States maternity care system. Birth. 2022 03; 49(1):3-10. PMID: 34698401.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 2/3/2021

    Edmonds JK, Declercq E, Sakala C. Women's childbirth experiences: A content analysis from the Listening to Mothers in California survey. Birth. 2021 06; 48(2):221-229. PMID: 33538003.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 8/14/2020

    Sakala C, Belanoff C, Declercq ER. Factors Associated with Unplanned Primary Cesarean Birth: Secondary Analysis of the Listening to Mothers in California Survey. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2020 Aug 14; 20(1):462. PMID: 32795305.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 7/27/2020

    Declercq E, Sakala C, Belanoff C. Women's experience of agency and respect in maternity care by type of insurance in California. PLoS One. 2020; 15(7):e0235262. PMID: 32716927.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 3/30/2020

    Sakala C. Toward a Workforce That Reliably Delivers High-Value Maternity Care in the United States. J Midwifery Womens Health. 2020 09; 65(5):605-608. PMID: 32232959.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 8/26/2019

    Declercq ER, Belanoff C, Sakala C. Intrapartum Care and Experiences of Women with Midwives Versus Obstetricians in the Listening to Mothers in California Survey. J Midwifery Womens Health. 2020 Jan; 65(1):45-55. PMID: 31448884.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 12/11/2018

    Nijagal MA, Wissig S, Stowell C, Olson E, Amer-Wahlin I, Bonsel G, Brooks A, Coleman M, Devi Karalasingam S, Duffy JMN, Flanagan T, Gebhardt S, Greene ME, Groenendaal F, R Jeganathan JR, Kowaliw T, Lamain-de-Ruiter M, Main E, Owens M, Petersen R, Reiss I, Sakala C, Speciale AM, Thompson R, Okunade O, Franx A. Standardized outcome measures for pregnancy and childbirth, an ICHOM proposal. BMC Health Serv Res. 2018 Dec 11; 18(1):953. PMID: 30537958.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 10/31/2018

    Kennedy HP, Kozhimannil KB, Sakala C. Using the Blueprint for Advancing High-Value Maternity Care for transformative change. Birth. 2018 12; 45(4):331-335. PMID: 30379349.

     Read At: PubMed

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