Maternal & Child Health

Searching in databases works best if you keep your search simple and use keywords, not phrases. Databases don't understand natural language or context; they can only look for the words you entered.

For example, searching for a phrase like "racial disparities in maternal health outcomes in Georgia" would only find articles that use the exact words "disparities" and "outcomes", but wouldn't find articles that only use the word disparity, or articles that are specifically about maternal morbidity.

Here are some keywords that you might use to search for articles on this topic.

Choose one keyword from each column and use the word AND to link them together. This will find articles that use each keyword. You do not have to use every column.

Examples:

maternal AND mortality AND disparities AND rural

fetal AND outcomes AND racism

You can search for more than one keyword from each column if you would like to broaden your search or if you want to make sure to capture all of the ways there is to describe a concept. When choosing keywords from the same column, link them together by the word OR within parentheses to find articles that mention either of the keywords.

Examples:

(maternal OR fetal) AND outcomes AND disparities AND Georgia

pregnancy AND outcomes AND (disparity OR disparities OR racism)

You can copy these searches or build your own with the keywords listed above, or your own list of keywords, and paste them into PubMed, CINAHL, PsycInfo, and other databases.