About the Centre
The Dugald Baird Centre for Research on Women's Health was launched in May 1995. As a centre of excellence within the University of Aberdeen's wider Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, we undertake people-based research focusing on the health of women as individuals and as populations.
The aim of the Dugald Baird Centre (DBC) is "to improve the reproductive health of women and the health of their families".
The Centre's work programme currently focuses on three main themes:
- epidemiology - aetiology, antecedents and sequelae of reproductive health outcomes;
- evaluation - clinical and cost-effectiveness of interventions; and acceptability, appropriateness and equity of care provision;
- methodology - research methods and process.
The staff in the unit provide a multi-disciplinary approach and excellence in quantitative and qualitative methods with capacity to draw upon appropriate research methods from both the medical and the social sciences.
DBC also has a library where a selection of books, reports and journals relating to obstetrics, gynaecology and midwifery can be accessed.
The Baird Legacy
Sir Dugald Baird1899-1986
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The Centre is named after Sir Dugald Baird, a distinguished figure in the University of Aberdeen's impressive history of research on reproductive health - a history which stretches back over two centuries to the work of Alexander Gordon on puerperal infection in 1795. Sir Dugald Baird graduated in medicine from Glasgow University in 1922. His early experiences attending births in the Glasgow slums and in the city's Royal Maternity Hospital shaped his interest in the social and economic influences on the health of women, their babies, and across generations. Sir Dugald came to Aberdeen in 1937 as Regius Professor of Midwifery. During the next three decades, he made outstanding contribution to the fields of clinical practice, service provision and health policy in reproductive health, perinatal and maternal mortality, social obstetrics, sterilisation, induced abortion, and cervical screening. With his wife Lady Baird, Sir Dugald also established the first free family planning clinic in Aberdeen. He recognised the importance of multi-professional and multi-disciplinary research teams. In 1951 he set up the Aberdeen Maternity and Neonatal Databank, which continues today to link all the obstetric and fertility-related events occurring to women from a defined population. Sir Dugald formally retired in 1965, and the Freedom of the City of Aberdeen was conferred on him and Lady Baird for their contribution to medical science and health in the City and beyond. The legacy of this distinguished figure underpins the work of the Dugald Baird Centre for Research on Women's Health. |
