Prof. Dr. Mechthild M. Gross, RM RN BSc MSc PD
Mechthild has been a midwifery researcher for more than 30 years. After training as a qualified nurse and a midwife, a BSc and MSc in psychology at the universities of Koblenz-Landau and Constance, Germany, she graduated from the University of Bremen with a PhD in 2001. In 2009, she submitted her post-doctoral thesis (Habilitation) on self-diagnosis of onset of labour. She became a professor in 2015.
Mechthild founded the Midwifery Research and Education Unit at Hannover Medical School (MHH) in 2001. Since 2009 she is the head of the European Master of Science in Midwifery programme at MHH in collaboration with Zuyd University, NL, and HES-SO, CH. So far she supervised 34 master theses of students who conducted their MSc projects in Bangladesh, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Iceland, Switzerland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. In 2020, one of the MSc theses is dedicated to perinatal mental health (by Alison Morrison). Prof. Gross has conducted several multicentre-studies funded by the German Research Council (DFG), FP7, and H2020. She is the principal investigator of the German arm of the H2020 ALERT consortium (2020-2024), led by Prof. C. Hanson, Karolinska Stockholm. The aim is to develop and evaluate a multifaceted intervention to reduce in-facility perinatal mortality and morbidity through a multidisciplinary approach in Benin, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda.
Mechthild was the vice chair and German representative on the Management Committee of the CA IS0907 (2010-2014), led by Prof. Soo Downe. She was the German represent-tative on the Management Committee of the CA IS1405 (2014-18), which was also led by Prof. Soo Downe. She is the German representative on the Management Committee of the CA18211 DEVoTION (2019-2023). She contributed to the Lancet Stillbirth Series (2016), the WHO recommendations on intrapartum care (2018), and to the WHO recommendations on non-clinical interventions to reduce unnecessary caesarean sections (2018). Prof. Gross keeps her clinical commitment to midwifery once a week.
Hannover Medical School, Midwifery Research and Education Unit
Gross.Mechthild@mh-hannover.de
Phone: 0049 511 532 6116
www.mhh.de/Hebammenwissenschaft.html
Research keywords: onset of labour, early labour, time-to-event analysis during labour, attitudes of women and clinicians, interinstitutional variations of perinatal outcomes, oxytocin augmentation during labour, VBAC, health related outcomes during labour .