Intercultural Birth Care Models: A Scoping Literature Review

Intercultural health models, which propose the combination of biomedical knowledge with ancestral cultural practices in healthcare, have been identified as a tool to improve health indicators in multicultural societies. In addition to expanding access to healthcare for marginalized populations, these models recognize the cultural diversity of territories, contributing to the legitimization of certain practices and knowledge, and combining them with biomedical approaches (Menéndez, 2016). Some of the first successful intercultural health models occurred in birth care models in countries such as Mexico, in the 1970s (Quattrocchi and Güémez-Pineda, 2007). In recent years, articulated with decolonial perspectives, these models have gained more relevance, especially, but not only, in Latin America. To understand their results and limitations, we propose a literature review on intercultural birth care models that have been implemented in different regional contexts.

A scoping literature review was carried out in Scopus, Web of Science, Medline, and SciELO databases. The research was conducted in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, contributing to results with a greater geographic and authorial scope of available data, answering more broadly to the purpose of the research. We expect that this literature review can critically understand the different perspectives adopted in intercultural birth care models and identify studies that promote the valorization and integration of ancestral and indigenous practices, enabling discussion between the benefits and challenges of these models, based on the existing literature.

Even though most intercultural birth assistance models are found in indigenous territories, their structure can be applied in other multicultural contexts, such as communities with a high number of immigrant populations. In a globalized world, finding solutions to guarantee people’s rights and forms of care is essential.