Improving health and wellbeing through patient-centred care: Lead maternity care service providers' online communication

For a majority of pregnant women, especially first-time users of maternity services, the Internet will be a major source of information and integral to their maternity care choices. New Zealand’s unique Lead Maternity Care (LMC) model reinforces the role of the woman as an active information seeker and decision-maker as she chooses from the assortment of publicly-funded and private services. However, the online health communications provided by LMCs is understudied. This research gap triggers questions such as how LMC websites: meet women’s information needs; enable appropriate and parsimonious decision-making regarding care choices; and encourage engagement with maternity care. Our purpose is to understand how woman-centred maternity care has been examined in the literature so that LMC website health communication can be interpreted.