Hilmar Bijma

Profile

Hilmar Bijma is endowed professor Child-wish exploration.

Vulnerable circumstances can make it difficult to make informed choices regarding the desire to have children and parenthood. This can lead to an unwanted pregnancy or to a pregnancy in which adverse factors influence the development of the (unborn) child and the health of the parent. Care providers involved with people in vulnerable circumstances play a crucial role in making a potential desire to have children open for discussion, so that people can take more and better control over their own desire to have children. This includes protection against pregnancy through good contraceptive care and/or preparing for a pregnancy through preconception care.

Dr. Hilmar Bijma has been working as a gynecologist-perinatologist at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Erasmus MC since 2015, with a focus on pregnancy in vulnerable situations. She studied medicine at the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam. She obtained her PhD at Erasmus University on shared decision-making regarding the diagnosis of congenital disorders of the (unborn) child during pregnancy and trained as a gynecologist in the Rotterdam Gynecologists Training Cluster. She conducts research into how knowledge about the influence of vulnerable circumstances before, during, and after pregnancy can be used to innovate care and increase societal impact.