Rate My Professor Maralyn Foureur

Professor Maralyn Foureur is an Honorary Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery within the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy and Graduate Diploma in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Newcastle. With a 40-year career as a researcher and clinician in maternity care and midwifery, she pioneered the introduction of the continuity of midwifery care model in Australia through her PhD study in the mid-1990s. This groundbreaking randomized controlled trial (RCT) demonstrated its effectiveness for women of all risk levels, influencing subsequent RCTs in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria, and shaping national health policy. Her work is cited by the Cochrane Collaboration and the World Health Organization, establishing continuity of care as the foundational model in Australian midwifery education and best practice worldwide. Foureur has held key positions including Joint Clinical Chair of the University of Newcastle and Hunter New England Local Health District, Professor of Midwifery Research and Director of the Centre for Midwifery, Child and Family Health at the University of Technology Sydney from 2011 to 2018, Professor of Midwifery at Victoria University of Wellington from 1998 to 2006, and Lecturer at the University of Newcastle in 1995. She maintains adjunct professorial appointments at the University of Technology Sydney, Victoria University of Wellington, and the University of Southern Denmark. She chaired the Maternal, Newborn and Women's Health Clinical Academic Group within the Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise from 2018.

Her research specializations encompass birth unit design and its effects on women's birth experiences and outcomes, clinical epidemiology, models of maternity care and health outcomes, neuroscience, neurophysiology, genomics, neuro-leadership, and interdisciplinary birth unit design. As Chief Investigator, she has secured four National Health and Medical Research Council Project Grants, including two RCTs and two cohort studies, an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, and a New South Wales Ministry of Health Translational Research Grant. Foureur has authored over 150 publications, with 70 in the past five years, including the books 'Birth Territory and Midwifery Guardianship' (2008), 'Exploring the Dirty Side of Women's Health' (2007), and 'New Directions in Nursing History' (2004); chapters such as 'Birth Territory: A Theory for Midwifery Practice' (2011) and 'Interconnectivity in the Birth Room' (2019); and recent journal articles like 'Women with perinatal mental health concerns have improved outcomes with Midwifery Continuity of Care but a change in practice is required to support the midwives' (2023) and '"If I\'m not getting oxygen, neither is my baby": A qualitative study of Australian women\'s experiences of asthma management in pregnancy' (2025). She has supervised over 40 doctoral, masters, and honours students in nursing, midwifery, public health, health informatics, complementary health, interdisciplinary health education, health architecture, and design at universities in Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark. Her contributions have elevated the University of Newcastle to a national leader in maternity services and midwifery models research, enhancing translational research capacity in nursing and midwifery within Hunter New England Local Health District.