Mário Jds Santos

Mário JDS Santos is Associate Researcher at the Comprehensive Health Research Centre. He is a Portuguese health sociologist specialized in qualitative methodologies. He holds a degree in Nursing (2007), an MSc in Health, Medicine and Society (2012), and PhD in Sociology (2020). In his nursing degree, he developed an exploratory research, with Brígida Riso, on the local implementation of the Health Promoting School concept as seen by the members of the school community. From 2008 onwards, he has been dedicated to research on the sociology of childbirth, namely on the social aspects surrounding contemporary home births, users's experience of maternity care, and obstetric violence. In his Master thesis, he developed a sociological research on how families constructed the option of a home birth. His PhD thesis was dedicated to the social dynamics of the professional and informal home birth networks in Portugal, under the supervision of Amélia Augusto and Jette A. Clausen. His research on home births has been mainly focused on Portugal, but he also developed exploratory research on the organisation of home births in Denmark and Israel, within the COST Actions IS0907 iResearch4Birth (2010-2014), and COST Action IS1405 BIRTH (2014-2018), of which he was an active member. He has shared extensively is work, in national and international conferences, and in journal articles and book chapters. He is the Portuguese coordinator of the "Babies Born Better" International Survey, and is member of this survey Steering Committee.