About Us

The South Community Birth Program (SCBP) was established in October 2003 to pilot a unique maternity care program situated in the South Community area of Vancouver, British Columbia.

At BC Women’s hospital, the Head of Family Practice, Sue Harris, and the Head of Midwifery, Lee Saxell, received funding through the Federal Government’s Primary Health Care Transition Funds, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and B.C. Women’s Hospital to pilot an innovative, collaborative, multidisciplinary program. Family physicians, midwives, community health nurses, and doulas all provide care in a community-based, culturally-appropriate, and woman-centered manner during pregnancy, birth and the newborn period. The SCBP is designed to improve the health outcomes of pregnant women in the underserved community of South Vancouver. This is the first such multidisciplinary program of its kind in Canada.

Since 2003 the SCBP has cared for more than 2000 women, many of whom are new immigrants to Canada. Today, our doula program is generously supported by BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre

Meet The Team
We are family and we love to travel the world!
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The goal of SCBP

The SCBP brings pregnancy and birth back to a community-based, peer-supported, primary care experience and aims to improve the health outcomes of women and their families by developing an environment in which the SCBP team:

  1. Collaborates with families to meet the needs of childbearing women in their community.
  2. Assists women and their families to identify their own strengths and build confidence in their ability to give birth and become parents.
  3. Encourages women and their families to assume an active role in their own health care.
  4. Provides a safe, positive birth experience through the reduction of interventions.
  5. Provides support following the birth so that women can have a shortened hospital stay.
  6. Encourages developing a strong sense of peer support among the women and their families, helping them to build community, reduce isolation, and provide ongoing support for each other when their care at SCBP is complete.

Communicating in Oscar

Part of the initial SCBP proposal included the implementation of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR). After viewing several EMRs for purchase we made a decision to implement Open Source Clinical Application Resource (OSCAR). We use electronic versions of the BC provincial maternity forms and receive many of our lab results directly into OSCAR. All of your records, including labs, consultations, and ultrasounds are scanned into OSCAR, which we can access from home and the hospital . Our message board is used daily by all of the providers at SCBP; we discuss client care plans and ask each other questions. On the daily screen we can see who is in labour at any given moment and we all know when the baby has been born when he or she is added to the screen - our own system of birth announcements!

It took us a few years to get there but in 2009, we became a paperless office!

A Green Office

SCBP is committed to being a paperless office! We chart electronically and do not use paper gowns or sheets (cloth only). We also use sterile metal speculums, rather than plastic, and environmentally friendly cleaning products. All handouts and information are printed from our EMR.