Delegates

Nancy Anderson MD MPH is originally from New York City, and attended Barnard College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is a board certified pediatrician with an MPH in Maternal-Child Health from the University of Washington. Nancy spent five years working in Mozambique, and worked for the Department of Social and Health Services here in Washington for twelve years. She currently teach in the division of Evening and Weekend Studies at The Evergreen State College. Her particular interests are health equity, global health issues, and the health of women and children, with a particular focus on the elimination of maternal infant health inequities in the US. Nancy is currently working on a research project sponsored by the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives. The research aims to understand the barriers that women of color experience with respect to the midwifery profession, and to describe the optimal structure for a midwifery education scholarship program aimed at women of color.

Elizabeth Mitchell Armstrong PhD MPA is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where she is also a faculty associate at the Office of Population Research, the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Center for Health and Wellbeing. She has research interests in the history and sociology of medicine, reproduction, particularly pregnancy and childbirth, public health, and medical ethics. She is particularly interested in the intersection of medicine and culture. She has published on mass media attention to disease, family planning, medical mistakes, adolescent motherhood, prenatal substance use, home birth, and the sociology of pregnancy and birth. She is the author of Conceiving Risk, Bearing Responsibility: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Diagnosis of Moral Disorder (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), the first book to explore fetal alcohol syndrome from a sociocultural perspective and to challenge conventional wisdom about drinking during pregnancy. She is currently conducting research on diseases and agenda-setting, on fetal personhood and the evolution of obstetrical practice and ethics, and on cultural and scientific understandings of placental form and function.

Armstrong holds a B.A. in English from Yale University, an M.P.A. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and a Ph.D. in sociology and demography from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan from 1998-2000 and currently serves on both the Board of Directors and the Certification Council of Lamaze International.

Deren Bader DrPH CPM for most of her 25-year career Deren has worked as a home birth midwife. She has been a CPM since 1996 and has a Doctor of Public Health from the University of Alabama, Birmingham School of Public Health. Her teaching and research emphasis has primarily been in perinatal epidemiology. Deren has been actively involved in midwifery politics and CPM licensure efforts around the United States. In Virginia, she was a member and served as chair of the Midwifery Advisory Board at the Virginia Board of Medicine from 2005-20012. Deren has served on the boards of MANA and FAM and was the Director of Research Education for the MANA Division of Research from 2003-2007. Deren currently works for Maternity Neighborhood as Director of Clinical Research.

Alice Bailes CNM has been a home birth mother, childbirth educator, birth activist, speaker, participant in regulatory processes, researcher, teacher, author and mostly, a midwife since 1972. More than 1650 babies have been born into her hands at homes, or at the BirthCare Alexandria, VA birth center. Education includes a BFA in Dance and Theatre in 1970 from NYU, BSN from George Mason in 1979, and an MS in Midwifery in 1981 from Georgetown.

From 1987 February 2013, she was the Co-Founder, Co-Owner, and Co-Director of BirthCare & Women’s Health, a home birth and birth center midwifery practice. The practice has provided service in over 4500 cases over the last 25 years, and currently serves 25-30 birthing families per month. Bailes was a founding member and former chair of the ACNM Home Birth Section, distributing statistical information, presenting at conferences, authoring official documents and participating in research that increased the visibility, importance and acceptability of home birth practice. She is co-editor of the ACNM Handbook on Home Birth Practice and co author of “Birth in the Home and Birth Center” in Varney’s Midwifery and co author of “Out of Hospital Birth” in the recently released 2013 book Supporting a Physiologic Approach to Pregnancy and Birth: A Practical Guide. Melissa D. Avery (Editor).

Since 1992 she has precepted midwifery students at all clinical levels. Because BirthCare is unique in providing a large census of home and birth center clients, students come to BirthCare from all over the US to gain home birth experience.

Sarita Bennett DO CPM is a midwife, physician, educator, and advocate for normal physiologic birth. Sarita trained and studied midwifery over thirty years ago via self-study, and became a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) in 2012. She graduated with honors from the WV School of Osteopathic Medicine in 1998 and completed a Family Medicine residency in 2001. She has experienced birth in many settings – both as mother and attendant – and inherently trusts both birth and the abilities of women’s bodies to give birth. Sarita currently practices as a Family Practice Physician in her own clinic and provides midwifery care there as well as serving women in homebirth. She is the current secretary for the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) and has been a long-standing member of her state professional organization, Midwives Alliance of WV (MAWV). Sarita is an instructor for the Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO) course, was a co-founder and educator at Sacred Mountain Midwifery School and is a clinical professor at the WV School of Osteopathic Medicine.

Ocean Berg RN MSN CNS received her BA in Sociology at University of California Santa Cruz, her MSN in Community Public Health/Clinical Nurse Specialist in Perinatal from San Francisco State University in 1998 and 2003 respectively. She is currently the Perinatal Clinical Nurse Specialist at San Francisco General Hospital. Ocean thrives in multidisciplinary work and strives to promote normalcy in high risk birth. Currently Ocean is representing AWHONN with MD Nancy Lowe in a Home Birth Consensus Summit. She has lectured throughout California for AWHONN on the subjects of Baby Friendly and Normalizing Childbirth. She has written an article for JPNN on the topic of Baby Friendly and for Maternal Child Nursing on the topic of Skin to Skin in the Operating Room. She is going to work with the CMQCC Preeclampsia Taskforce. Ocean lives in San Francisco with her two home birthed daughters, extreme sport engrossed husband and two calico cats. Non professional pursuits include outdoor sports of all sorts and enjoying her extended family of friends.

Linda Cole CNM PhD is a graduate of the Medical University of Carolina for her Masters degree in nurse-midwifery and Frontier Nursing University for her doctorate in nursing practice. She is currently serving as President of the American Association of Birth Centers. She has worked at the Lisa Ross Birth and Women’s Center in Knoxville, Tennessee since 1994 and was the Executive Director of the center from 2000-2011. She has been involved in the clinical education of midwifery students for her entire career and is currently working as a Regional Clinical Faculty for Frontier Nursing University, as well as practicing full-scope midwifery. She has been interested in demonstrating cost outcomes of birth center care, and is currently involved in research in this area.

Bonnie Conners Jellen MHSA is Director of the Section for Maternal and Child Health at the American Hospital Association (AHA) and is responsible for working with the over 2000 member hospitals providing specialty care to women and children. Over three decades, she has worked exclusively in the maternal and child health field including positions at the AHA, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and on Capitol Hill for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Subcommittee on Child and Human Development. Bonnie has been active in many organizations including committee appointments at the March of Dimes, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and other national and local child health initiatives. Bonnie has an undergraduate degree in Child Development from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a graduate degree in Health Services Administration from The George Washington University, Washington, DC.

Jeanne Conry MD PhD OBGYN is assistant physician in chief for Kaiser Permanente’s Sacramento-Roseville region in CA, where she also oversees member marketing and health and wellness programs for patients and employees. She is on the executive committee for the Preconception Health Council of California and serves on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention select panel on Preconception. She is also Chair of ACOG District IX.

Benjamin Danielson MD was in the foster care system as a young child. He spent most of his childhood in a low income neighborhood of Washington DC, and finished high school in rural Montana. Along with two sisters, he was raised by an amazing single mom who instilled in him an appreciation for the value of education and a desire to be a contributing member of the community. In college he decided being a doctor was a good melding of scientific and human service interests. After finishing his undergraduate studies in Boston, Dr Danielson’s medical education, residency and career have all been spent in Seattle. Upon completing residency he initially combined a number of professional activities: attending pediatrician at Harborview Medical Center, community pediatrician in a new clinic in West Seattle, directing a teen clinic at Cleveland High School, running a community pediatric sports medicine clinic, and attending physician stints at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Dr Danielson then became the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic’s medical director in 1999. As the inaugural Sinegal Endowed Chair since 2005, he tries to uphold the clinic’s enduring tradition of growing wellness through quality care with dignity, community engagement, honoring culture and sustaining trust. He continues to regularly attend on the inpatient service at Seattle Children’s Hospital, working mostly with the most medically complex hospitalized children. Dr Danielson also continues to participate in community advocacy and health promotion. He serves on the state’s health benefit exchange, the state’s commission on African American health affairs, King County’s board of health, various boards of philanthropic organizations, and community groups dedicated to health issues. Dr Danielson believes that an opportunity to serve an individual or a community is a cherished privilege. He also ascribes to the truism that health is more than healthcare and that any healthcare provider who strives to improve health must be active beyond the realm of their medical practice.

Eugene Declercq PhD MS MBA is a Professor of Community Health Sciences and Assistant Dean for DrPH Education at the Boston University School of Public Health and professor on the faculty of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Boston University School of Medicine. He has served as lead author of national reports on women’s experiences in childbirth and in the postpartum period entitled Listening to Mothers I, II & III and New Mothers Speak Out and is the founder of the website www.birthbythenumbers.org. He is one of the Principal Investigators for the Massachusetts Outcomes Study of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (MOSART) an NIH funded study of infant and maternal outcomes associated with assisted reproductive technologies. He was awarded the 2013 Martha May Eliot award from the American Public Health Association for service to maternal and child health in the U.S.

Farah Diaz-Tello JD is Staff Attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), which works to secure the human and civil rights, health and welfare of pregnant and parenting women, focusing particularly on those who are most vulnerable – low income women, women of color, and drug-using women. At NAPW, she has focused on birth justice: ensuring that women have options in birth, the economic and social support necessary to access those options, and the freedom to exercise them with dignity and without coercion or punishment. She has tracked and documented cases in which women have been threatened or punished with court orders or child removal for their choices in prenatal care and delivery. Ms. Diaz-Tello has also assisted in cases in which families have been investigated and babies separated from their mothers on the basis of the decision to birth at home. She hopes to bring to the Summit the human, Constitutional, and common law rights dimension of homebirth policies, knowledge of the duties of mandatory child protective reporters with regard to birthing women, and the ethical/public health perspective on coercive or punitive use of legal systems against birthing women.

Tara N. Gaston JD is an attorney residing in the Seattle metropolitan area and working primarily in healthcare access and decision-making, parental rights, and ethics and informed consent. Tara is completing a Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in maternal and child health, part of which is devoted to developing educational modules for maternity care providers with respect to liability and ethics. She is a founding member of the Birth Rights Bar Association (BRBA), director and pro bono chair of the Military Spouse JD Foundation, and member in a number of other professional organizations. In addition to her professional work, Tara is partner to an active-duty submariner with whom she parents four children, three of whom were born at home.

Laurie Gregg MD is a board certified OB/Gyn who practices in a small group that works with multiple hospital systems in California. In addition to her practice, she is Medical Director of Patient Safety and Quality Improvement for Women’s Services and Chair of the Professional Practice Evaluation Committee at Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento. She is Co-Chair of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Committee for ACOG District IX and works on various committees at the national level including the Home Birth Task Force. As Assistant Clinical Professor at UC Davis, she leads medical students through their first experiences on Labor and Delivery while serving as a hospitalist.

Maxine Hayes MD MPH served the Washington State Department of Health from December 1, 1988 to December 31, 2013. Sixteen of those years as State Health Officer for the Washington State Department of Health. As the state’s top public health doctor, her role included advising the governor and the secretary of health on issues ranging from health promotion and chronic disease prevention, to emergency response, including pandemic influenza preparedness. She also worked closely with the medical community, local health departments and community groups. Prior to her appointment as State Health Officer, Dr. Hayes was the Assistant Secretary of Community and Family in the Department of Health.

She is the recipient of many awards and honors for her work in maternal and child health, including the American Medical Association’s 2002 Dr. Nathan Davis Award and the 2003 Heroes in Health Care Lifetime Achievement Award through the Washington Health Foundation. In November of 2007 she received the APHA Helen Rodriguez-Trias Social Justice Award. In January of 2014 she received the Vince Hutchins Award for leadership in Maternal and Child Health.

Dr. Hayes is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Clinical Professor of Health Services at the University of Washington School of Public Health in Seattle. She holds two honorary Doctorates Degrees: one from Spelman College and one from the State University of New York.

Dr. Hayes is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Hayes was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), October 2006.

Hermine Hayes-Klein JD is an American lawyer and is the Founder and Program Director of Human Rights in Childbirth. Hermine lived in the Netherlands from 2007 – 2012, where both of her children were born at home with a Dutch midwife. Her legal practice has included advocacy for the rights of women, children, and LGBT individuals, as well as the defense of home birth midwives. Human Rights in Childbirth is an international organization that connects legal advocates and political activists working in different countries around the world to promote the fundamental human rights of birthing women. Hermine now lives in Portland, Oregon. humanrightsinchildbirth.com.

Zsakeba Henderson MD is a Medical Officer in the Maternal and Infant Health Branch in the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and leads the Division’s activities in support of state-based perinatal quality improvement collaboratives, which currently provides support to statewide collaboratives in California, New York, and Ohio. In this position she also provides clinical input into the development of the research agenda for the Maternal and Infant Health Branch, including activities in preterm birth and pregnancy-related mortality. She serves as the Division’s Liaison to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women, and as a breastfeeding advocate and physician peer-educator for the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics EPIC Breastfeeding Program. Dr. Henderson received her BS degree in biochemistry from Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama, and her medical degree from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. She then completed her internship and residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital Integrated Residency Program in Obstetrics and Gynecology, also in Boston. She subsequently entered the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she worked in the Division of STD Prevention in the Health Services Research and Evaluation Branch. Her work and interests include understanding clinician practices and decision-making, perinatal quality improvement, prevention of preterm birth, and the role of the obstetrician-gynecologist in promoting and supporting breastfeeding.

Jenifer Holloman BS MEd is a trained doula, childbirth educator and consumer advocate for families in the childbearing year. First and foremost she is a mother! Her current focus is on improving the care of mothers and babies through grass roots organizing, participation in the Home Birth Summit Consumer Engagement group by supporting the licensing and legalization of certified professional midwives in the United States and the ongoing efforts of consumer based legislation. She lives on beautiful Cape Cod.

Diane Holzer LM CPM PA-C has been a home birth midwife for close to 30 years and has worked as a physician assistant for 20 years in a rural healthcare family practice clinic that has a large farm worker population. She has been actively involved with the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) for more than 20 years and is a Past President. She has been on the faculty at Maternidad La Luz, a midwifery training program, for over 10 years. She served on the board of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) as the regional representative for the Americas and was appointed ICM representative to the United Nations for a three-year term. She participated on the Board of Midwifery Education Accreditation Council for 13 years and was an active participant in the formation of the CPM credential.

Diane lives in Marin County and loves to watch whales and is a member of a stilt dancing troupe!

Alexandra R Johnson MD is a family physician and faculty at the University of Colorado Family Medicine Department in Denver, CO. She began her career as a doula at the Bay Area Perinatal AIDS program at San Francisco General Hospital, and travelled to Ecuador where she spent time with a local midwife and healer. She attended the Medical School for International Health in Israel, where she was exposed to a midwife-based birthing system in the local hospitals. During this time she sat on the board for COHI (Circle of Health International), a non-profit group that supports midwives and perinatal health in international underserved and war torn communities. She has completed an OB Fellowship at Swedish hospital in Denver, CO, and worked as the transferring physician for Mountain Midwifery, Denver’s only free standing birthing center. She currently divides her time between a clinic in Ft Morgan, CO, where she practices full spectrum OB care, and as an attending at the University of Colorado Hospital where she sits on both the task forces for the hospital initiative to use Nitrous Oxide for pain control in Labor, and the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative. She also is very active as an ALSO instructor throughout Colorado.

Rima Jolivet CNM DrPH FACNM is a certified nurse-midwife with expertise in the areas of healthcare quality improvement and organizational development. She has extensive experience working with multi-stakeholder collaboratives to improve maternity care. She is currently the Director of Professional and Business Development at the Centering Healthcare Institute (CHI), the organization that developed and promotes Centering Pregnancy, an evidence-based model of group prenatal care. She directs the pool of 25 consultants who provide training and support for the Centering model to healthcare systems, and contributes to the development and implementation of CHI’s organizational strategy for scale up and spread of the model. In her previous position with the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, she was the Maternal Health Technical Director for the USAID Health Policy Project, led by the Futures Group. As the Associate Director of Programs for Childbirth Connection from 2007 – 2010, she directed the multi-stakeholder Transforming Maternity Care Project and Partnership and co-authored its publications including 2020 Vision for a High Quality, High Value Maternity Care System and Blueprint for Action: Steps Toward a High Quality, High Value Maternity Care System.

Lisa Kane Low PhD CNM FACNM FAAN is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Women’s Studies Department at the University of Michigan. She completed her doctoral studies and an NIH BIRCWH post-doctoral fellowship in interdisciplinary women’s health research, also at the University of Michigan. She brings her twenty five years of midwifery clinical practice experience to the research questions she asks about labor care practices, with an emphasis on evidence based practices to promote physiologic birth and optimal health outcomes for women and families. Her many of her publications have focused on shared decision making in maternity care and promotion of evidence based practices during second stage labor. Lisa is also the chair of the ACNM Division of Standards and Practice, which includes the clinical standards and documents and the homebirth section. In this role she assists in ushering policy and standard setting documents from development to implementation, including those related to Homebirth. She also chairs the ACNM subcommittee which developed BirthTOOLS.org with Childbirth Connection to promote physiologic birth by maternity care providers in the hospital setting. As an ongoing delegate at the Homebirth Summit she has been a member of the Collaboration Task Force which has recently released the Best Practice Guidelines for Transfer from Home to the Hospital Setting.

Tanya Khemet LM IBCLC leads home birth advocacy for the International Center for Traditional Childbearing and is a member of the Home Birth Summit steering committee. She is co-founder of Birth and Family Health Center in Sacramento, California, an innovative multidisciplinary women’s health center. After receiving her midwifery training in Seattle, Washington at the Seattle School of Midwifery, she furthered her skills and life experience with apprenticeships in Senegal and Jamaica, where she learned another dimension of homebirth from an international lens. Prior to her work with Birth and Family Health Center, Tanya spent eight years coordinating obstetric, psychosocial and health education service delivery as a midwife and clinic administrator at the Birthing Project Clinic in Sacramento which serves low-income high risk women and teens. Tanya is the mother of three terrific daughters who were all born at home.

Elselijn Kingma MSc Mphil PhD is the Socrates Professor in Philosophy and Technology in the Humanist Tradition, at the University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands, as well as a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. Dr. Kingma completed a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University in Cambridge in 2008 and subsequently held postdoctoral research positions at the Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health (USA – 2008/2009); King’s College London (2010-2013) as part of a Wellcome Trust Strategic Enhancement Award in the Medical Humanities; and most recently a temporary lectureship in Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge (2013). Dr. Kingma’s research focuses on philosophy of medicine (concepts of health and disease and the epistemology of Evidence Based Medicine); applied ethics (‘trust’ in medical interactions and rights, interests and obligations in pregnancy and birth); and the metaphysics of pregnancy, identity and personhood. She has published on these topics in philosophy journals, medical journals, and the popular press.

Mary Lawlor, CPM, LM, NHCM, MA, is a Certified Professional Midwife in private home birth practice in Vermont and New Hampshire since 1981 and the owner of the Monadnock Birth Center in New Hampshire since 2008. She earned a BS from Georgetown University, her Associate in Midwifery in 1981 at The Maternity Center in El Paso, Texas, a high-volume freestanding birth and midwifery training center, and an MA in Counseling from Lesley University in Boston in 1986. She was active in successful legislative efforts to license midwives in both Vermont and New Hampshire, and has served as a Midwife Advisor to the Vermont Office of Professional Regulation since 2003, helping to oversee the practice of midwifery in the state. A founding board member, Mary served as President of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM) from 2003 until 2012, and currently is the Executive Director of NACPM. She serves as national Policy Advisor to NACPM and the Midwives and Mothers in Action (MAMA) Campaign, a coalition of six midwifery-related organizations advocating in the U.S. Congress for increased access for women across the country to Certified Professional Midwife services and high-quality, high-value maternity care.

Jacqueline Left Hand Bull Delahunt has been the Administrative Officer for the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board since 2008, and held the same position with the Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board in the Northern Plains from 2005-2008. She was graduated from The Evergreen State College and did graduate work at the University of Washington toward a Masters in Education Curriculum. Her prior work included directing the Northern Plains Healthy Start program, service on the IHS Aberdeen Area Infant Mortality Review Committee, the Advisory Committee for South Dakota Institute for Infant Development and Care; and the South Dakota Department of Health Task Force on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder. She has been involved in service to indigenous/Native communities, in both volunteer and paid positions, for four decades. Her work includes 12 years outside of the United States, in Latin America, Canada, and the circumpolar regions among indigenous peoples. She is the Health Board’s staff member assigned to oversee the Northwest Tribal FASD Project. Jacqueline is an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota (Rosebud Sioux Tribe).

Jennifer Leone MD Candidate is a 3rd year MD student at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, OH who is planning to pursue a career in Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is currently conducting a research project on physicians’ attitudes and knowledge about home birth for her MD thesis. This project involves surveying licensed OB/GYNs in three states with different home birth regulations to assess whether these differences impact physician attitudes toward home birth, experience with home birth, and knowledge about home birth. She is currently in the process of analyzing survey responses and is excited to share her findings soon.

Audrey Levine LM CPM has been a licensed midwife in Olympia, Washington since 2001. She was the President of the Midwives’ Association of WA State (MAWS) from 2008 – 2012 and continues to serve on the MAWS Board of Directors as Chair of the Legislative and Policy Committee. In 2012, she joined the Board of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM) and is currently serving as Vice-President. Since attending the first Home Birth Summit in 2011, Audrey has been actively involved as a member of the Collaboration Workgroup that just released the “Best Practice Guidelines: Transfer from Planned Home Birth to Hospital.” She recently became the Project Coordinator for Smooth Transitions, a quality-improvement initiative of the WA State Perinatal Collaborative to enhance the safety of planned out-of-hospital birth transports.

Tiffany Lundeen MSc CNM completed graduate studies in art history before training as a midwife. She received her Masters of Science in Nursing (Midwifery) from Yale University in 2004. She worked in New Haven, CT from 2004-2008 at two community health centers, providing full-scope women’s health care and attending births at a small community hospital. She simultaneously worked part-time for an independent CNM practice offering home and hospital birth. After joining the faculty practice of CNMs at the University of Utah in 2010, she opened a small private home birth practice on the side. The University of Utah Medical Center threatened to revoke her hospital privileges if she attended any home births. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Annie Drapkin Lyerly MD MA is the Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics and Associate Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. An obstetrician/gynecologist and bioethicist, her work addresses a range of ethically complex clinical and policy issues in women’s reproductive health. She is author of book, A Good Birth (Penguin Group/USA), based on The Good Birth Project, aimed at describing what constitutes a “good birth” from the perspectives of birthing women themselves. She co-founded the Obstetrics and Gynecology Risk Research Group, a group of experts from medical epidemiology, anthropology, obstetrics and gynecology, philosophy, bioethics, gender theory and medical humanities for research on how risk is assessed and managed in the context of pregnancy. Together with Ruth Faden and Maggie Little, she also co-founded the Second Wave Initiative, an effort to ensure that the health interests of women are fairly represented in biomedical research and drug and device policies, and is PI on the NIH-funded PHASES study, to examine barriers, priorities and novel research designs around research addressing HIV and pregnancy. She has addressed a range of topics in reproductive medicine, including stem cell research and frozen embryo disposition, miscarriage, maternal-fetal surgery, and vaginal birth after cesarean.

Marian F. MacDorman PhD is a senior statistician and researcher in the Reproductive Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Marian has published extensively on home and out-of-hospital birth, cesarean section, induction of labor, preterm birth, infant, fetal and perinatal mortality, and other topics related to the birthing process. Her latest publication on out-of-hospital birth is available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db144.pdf. Marian is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care.

Élan Vital McAllister is the Founder and Executive Director of Choices in Childbirth, a New York City-based consumer advocacy organization whose mission is to improve maternity care by providing women and families with the information necessary to make fully informed decisions relating to how, where, and with whom they will give birth. She is Co-founder of the Grassroots Advocates Committee of The Coalition for Improving Maternity Services and was a co-creator of The Birth Survey, an on-line consumer tool that allows women to provide feedback on maternity care providers and facilities. Élan is the consumer representative for the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). She is a DONA-Trained Labor Doula who has been attending home births as well as births in hospitals and birth centers since 2000. Élan is a featured speaker in Ricki Lake’s groundbreaking 2008 documentary film, The Business of Being Born.

As a Broadway Producer, Élan’s credits include The Peewee Herman Show, American Idiot, Come Fly Away, Cry Baby, Coram Boy, Spamalot (Tony Award), Hairspray (Tony Award), Metamorphoses, The Crucible, and The Iceman Cometh. Her London producing credits include Spamalot, Rent and Michael Moore Live!

Jeanette McCulloch, IBCLC has brought strategic communications to women’s health advocacy for more than 20 years. She is the co-founder of BirthSwell (www.birthswell.com) an organization improving infant and maternal health by changing the way we talk about birth and breastfeeding. BirthSwell provides local, national, and international birth and breastfeeding organizations and advocates with strategic communications, ensuring that families have access to high-quality care and information. She is a board member of Citizens for Midwifery and is passionate about consumer representation and health equity in birth and breastfeeding. She also speaks about social media, strategic communications, and health equity for birth and breastfeeding professionals at national conferences.

Betsy McNamara serves as Consultant to the Transforming Birth Fund. She brings to this role her experience birthing two children with the help of midwives and her 25-year career fundraising for community-based organizations. The Transforming Birth Fund, a donor advised fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, believes that medical interventions are overused in the US maternity care system, resulting in declining outcomes and increasing cost. The Transforming Birth Fund’s vision is that all women have access to the level of maternity care they want and need and maternity care systems are in place to support them in doing so. Since 2005 the Transforming Birth Fund has awarded $4.5 million in grants. Grantees include the Childbirth Connection program of the National Partnership for Women and Families, Yale University School of Nursing, the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives, Midwives Alliance of North America, American College of Nurse Midwives, and the Home Birth Consensus Summit.

Tami J. Michele DO FACOOG OB/GYN is a Board Certified physician, Department Chair, and Medical Director of Spectrum Health Gerber Memorial OB/GYN in Fremont, MI. Dr. Michele is on the OB Advisory Committee for the Michigan Hospital Association Keystone OB Project which is improving the maternity and perinatal safety in Michigan hospitals. She previously served on the Leadership Team of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS). As a delegate to the Home Birth Consensus Summit, she is an active participant on the Collaboration Task Force. She has provided obstetrical and surgical services to women in rural, inner city, and metropolitan areas as well as Togo, West Africa. Prior to medical school, Tami worked as a doula, childbirth educator, prenatal fitness instructor, and midwife assistant. Her experiences have brought a unique perspective into her OB/GYN practice.

Shafia M. Monroe LM is a veteran midwife certified by the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance, a Certified Childbirth Educator, a Doula Trainer, a professional speaker and founder of the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC), a non-profit that increases the number of Black midwives, doulas and healers in order to empower families to reduce infant and maternal mortality. She holds a BA in sociology, with a concentration in medical sociology from the University of Massachusetts and a Master of Public Health from Walden University. Shafia speaks internationally on infant mortality prevention and increasing the number of midwives of color to improve birth outcomes.

Shafia is the visionary behind the prominent International Black Midwives and Healers Conference that brings midwives and other health care providers together to galvanize resources and implement strategies for reducing infant mortality and strengthening families. She is a community organizer for birth justice and advocates for increasing the number of African descent midwives and their having a seat at the decision making table for the advancement of the profession. She campaigns for health equity and works on local and national legislation to improve maternal and child health and newborn care.

She originated the legislative concept for HB3311 that passed in Oregon in 2011, so that every woman can access a doula. She has trained over five-hundred doulas nationally and has trained midwives in Columbia and Sierra Leone. She is a wife, mother, a nana, and a mentor to women aspiring to be midwives and doulas. She loves to garden, write, ride horses and cook for family and friends. Shafia’s has received numerous awards for her groundbreaking work and has been featured in books, magazines, documentaries and on a mural in Portland, OR.

Jessicca Moore BSc is a family nurse practitioner and filmmaker in Petaluma, CA. A graduate of the UCLA school of nursing, she has always been drawn to people and their stories. She is passionate about empowering women and families through information sharing.  She currently practices full scope primary care at Petaluma Health Center where she has worked for the past 9 years.

Her path to motherhood started with a high-tech IVF conception and culminated in a low tech birth at home. Her first film, “Why Not Home?” is currently in production and explores risk, safety, and the experience of childbirth in America through the stories of doctors, nurses, and midwives who attend birth in the hospital and who chose to have their own children at home.

Jessicca comes to the summit as a consumer, a clinician, and a filmmaker with the goal of learning from other stakeholders and documenting the ways in which people with differing opinions are working together around a shared agenda.

Stephen Murphy “Murph” has been a paramedic for over thirtyfive years. His experience in the EMS community is extremely diverse. He has worked in both the rural and urban settings: He’s served as a flight paramedic in Colorado, an EMS supervisor and manager in the private ambulance sector, and as an EMS educator. He currently works as a Battalion Chief / Paramedic for West Pierce Fire & Rescue near Tacoma, Washington. He is also one of the primary partners in Murphee CME Inc., a medical education and consulting firm. He continues to serves as an American Heart Association Regional Faculty for both ACLS and PALS. He has been actively involved in the continuing education of medical professionals, administrators, and other educators for the past thirtyfive years, and has had the privilege of being invited to speak at many state, national and international EMS conferences. One of his most requested topics is OB/GYN Emergencies and Childbirth.

Jo Anne Myers-Ciecko MPH has been a leader of efforts to advance midwifery and the profession of Certified Professional Midwives for nearly 35 years. As a consumer advocate concerned with improving maternal-child health, she has supported the development of midwifery education, regulation and professional associations since her own home birth experience in 1976. In 1983, Myers-Ciecko began nearly two decades of service as executive director for the Seattle Midwifery School, a position from which she became a driving force for self-regulatory and regulatory advances for midwives in the state of Washington and nationally. She was a founding board member of the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council (MEAC) in 1991, the US Department of Education-recognized accrediting agency for the field. She served as its executive director from 2008 to 2011. She is currently a consultant to the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives. Myers-Ciecko has spoken and consulted widely, including service on the Task Force on Emerging Professions and the Task Force on the Future of Midwifery at the Center for Health Professions, University of California, San Francisco. She completed her Master’s in Public Health from the University of Washington in 1998.

Marianne Nieuwenhuijze MPH RM PhD is Head of Research Centre for Midwifery Science and Midwifery Education & Studies Maastricht, which is part of Zuyd University in the Netherlands.

After graduation as a midwife, she worked in the obstetric department of a regional hospital. Five years later, she joined a midwifery practice with four colleagues in the south of the Netherlands. She worked as an independent midwife in the community supporting women through pregnancy, birth and in the postnatal period and doing many home births in close collaboration with other professionals such maternity care assistants, obstetricians and GP’s. This work sparked her interest in scientific research and the underpinning of midwives’ actions.

Her main research fields of interest are women’s views on care, and health promotion in maternity care, with a special focus on women’s mental well-being during pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. Presently she is doing research on women’s choices and decision-making in midwifery care, e.g. with regard to birthing positions and place of birth. This was also the focus of her PhD project.

She participates in national and international research projects and is the official Dutch representative in the European COST Action: Childbirth – Cultures, Concerns and Consequences. She was a member of the national Science Committee for Midwifery in 2009-2010. She has been a member of the national Midwifery Guidelines Commission of the Dutch midwives’ organisation from 1998-2009 and chair of this commission from 2004 – 2008. Until recently, she was a member of the National Guideline Committee for Obstetrics.

Nichole Reding MA, CPM, LDM may have only been a midwife for a few years, but she has served midwives by working in midwifery education for 13 years. During these years at Birthingway, Nichole has been the advisor to midwifery students, coordinated the many certification programs, and developed the Associates Degree Program for Lactation Consultants. Currently, in her role as Academic Coordinator, she supervises and reviews curriculum for all programs, helps ensure compliance with State and Federal requirements, and teaches many courses in the midwifery program. Nichole started her academic career in the field of History, and has been able to combine her interests in history and midwifery by teaching the Midwifery History and Politics course at Birthingway. She represents Direct Entry Midwifery on the ACCAHC Board and serves as a Board member of the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council (MEAC). As a member of the MEAC Board, Nichole has served on a committee aimed at improving communication between NARM and MEAC. She joined other representatives of MEAC at the 2012 US-MERA meeting. This is her second year as a delegate to the Home Birth Summit. Last year, she participated in the Interprofessional Education workgroup. In local politics, she is also the Vice President of the Oregon Midwifery Council. She still tries to find time to serve individual families as they move through their childbearing year; witnessing the highs and lows of the human experience and holding space as a woman transitions into motherhood.

Nick Rubashkin MD, MA obtained his MD and his MA (Anthropology) from Stanford University and is an obstetrician who was born at home. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Institute of Behavioural Sciences at Semmelweis University in Budapest, where he and his team–with additional help from Saraswathi Vedam–are completing a survey of women’s birth preferences. The survey will also focus on issues that are particular to Central/Eastern Europe, including underuse of informed consent and the role of unofficial cash payments in maternity care. The results of this research will be used in Hungary to better support birthing women and their families, shift public opinion, and educate providers. His focus on issues of choice and childbirth will inform his future clinical interactions, research projects, and policy work in the United States. Nick will return to the U.S. in December 2013 and is currently applying to graduate research fellowships.

Catherine Ruhl CNM MS is Director of Women’s Health Programs at the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) in Washington, DC. Catherine has 30 years of experience in maternal health as a clinician, manager and educator. She coordinates professional nursing education programming at AWHONN and represents AWHONN to a variety of national organizations including the National Maternal Health Initiative, the Center for Disease Control’s Select Panel on Preconception Care, and the HHS Maternal Immunization Working Group. Catherine’s portfolio at AWHONN includes work on diabetes in pregnancy, perinatal nurse staffing, obstetric triage, vaccination issues, and consumer education through AWHONN’s Healthy Mom & Baby consumer media. She obtained her Bachelors in Nursing from the University of Kansas and her Masters in Nursing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Catherine has been a certified nurse-midwife for 25 years and currently practices at Providence Hospital in Washington, DC. She is clinical adjunct faculty for the Georgetown University nurse-midwifery program.

Stephen Ruocco is the Divisional Vice President of the Healthcare Malpractice Claims Department with AIG Insurance. With nearly 30 years of health professional liability experience, Stephen manages a small group of experienced adjusters, each with nearly 20 years healthcare malpractice claims experience on average, who primarily focus on adjusting severity healthcare claims. They are responsible for a national diary of primary and excess cases involving hospitals, physician groups, midwives, long term care facilities, medical laboratories, miscellaneous healthcare related facilities, and individual healthcare providers. Their cases usually involve plaintiff injuries of death, paralysis, birth injuries, and severe physical injuries.

Valerie Sasson LM CPM is a resident midwife and a founding co-owner of Puget Sound Midwives and Birth Center in Kirkland, Washington. She is currently serving as President of the Midwives Association of Washington State, adjunct faculty at Bastyr University Department of Midwifery and is the former Chair of the Midwifery and Birthing Center Joint Underwriting Association under the auspices of the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner.

Ms. Sasson earned her BA from Brown University in 1986 and midwifery education from the Seattle Midwifery School in 1999. She worked in urban community health during the interim.

Collaboration and the shared responsibility between families, midwives and the larger medical community that contributes to -or detracts from- the safety and satisfaction of birth is of particular interest to her.

Rebecca Spence JD is an attorney and bioethicist practicing in Northern Virginia. Her interests fall at the intersection of protecting individual rights and promoting population health, particularly for vulnerable women. She earned her undergraduate degree in religion and women’s studies at Vassar College and holds an MPH from the University of Virginia, focused in Law, Policy, and Ethics. She graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law, where she was a Leadership Scholar and a Global Health Fellow. Rebecca was a Reproductive Justice Fellow working on health care reform, disparities, and maternal and child health in 2011-2012. In 2010, Rebecca co-founded Legal Advocates for Birth Options & Rights (LABOR), to apply legal analysis and develop legal capacity to address the pressing problems in US maternity care. Her award-winning article, “Abandoning Women to Their Rights: What Happens When Feminist Jurisprudence Ignores Birthing Rights” was recently published in the Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender.

Jennifer Taylor MPH Jennifer Taylor is a Legislative Assistant for Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (ME-01). Her legislative portfolio includes health and human services, women’s issues, low income housing, and immigration, and she is currently responsible for managing H.R. 1054, the Access to Certified Professional Midwives Act. She previously served as a health policy fellow for Congresswoman Lois Capps (CA-23). She has a Master’s in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles, and bachelor’s degrees in Biological Sciences and Psychology and Social Behavior from the University of California, Irvine. Before moving to Washington DC she was the Program and Public Policy Manager for the Perinatal Advisory Council (PAC/LAC), a nonprofit organization focused on improving maternal and child health and birth outcomes in Southern California.

Israel Teitelbaum BS JD is the President of Contemporary Insurance Services, Inc. (CIS), an insurance agency specializing in Healthcare Malpractice Insurance. CIS is the Program Manager for a Malpractice Insurance Program that provides coverage to Midwives. The program has the exclusive endorsements of ACNM and AABC and has been providing this coverage for over a decade. Israel is also an attorney with years’ of experience in Litigation, Business and Communications Law. He has been an advocate promoting broad insurance coverage forms for midwives and is very familiar with the Malpractice Insurance issues they face.

John Wachtel MD is a private obstetrician gynecologist with a full time active practice. He has personally delivered over 6000 babies during his career. He has always practiced at Stanford University Hospital where he is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Stanford Medical School. He has extensive experience in peer review and quality assessment and improvement at the local, state and national levels. He has served on numerous ACOG national committees including the Committee of Obstetric Practice for three years and the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Committee for 8 years, including 2 years as Chair. Dr. Wachtel is currently the Chair for ACOG District IX (California), Chair of the District IX Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Committee and chairs the District IX Speaker’s Bureau on Eliminating Elective Deliveries Prior to 39 Weeks. For 4 years previously he has been the Program Director for the ACOG Voluntary Review of Quality of Care Program. He serves on the CMQCC Executive Committee and has served numerous roles for the March of Dimes, including as an author and editor for the monograph, Towards Improving the Outcomes of Pregnancy III. He has lectured extensively both nationally and internationally on various Patient Safety topics.

Allison Walsh IBCLC LCCE FACCE is a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, who manages the Parent Education and Lactation programs at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. She is a past president of Lamaze International and currently serves as Chair of the Education Council and Lamaze’s alternate delegate to the United States Breastfeeding Committee where she serves on the Board of Directors as Treasurer. Allison is a member of the New York City Breastfeeding Leadership Council and an active La Leche League Leader. She is a graduate of Syracuse University and mother of three children, two of whom were born at home.

Kristi Watterberg MD FAAP is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of New Mexico. She served as Chief of the Division of Neonatology from 2006 – 2011, and is now the Director of the UNM Signature Program in Child Health Research. Dr. Watterberg has received federal funding for observational and interventional studies exploring the relationships between prenatal and postnatal inflammation, adrenal function, and the development of BPD. Dr. Watterberg is the Principal Investigator at New Mexico for the NICHD Neonatal Research Network, which has multiple ongoing observational and interventional studies, and was recently awarded a grant from NIH to study adrenal function at age 6 in children born extremely preterm. Author of over 60 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Watterberg serves on NIH peer review panels, is a member of the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society, and is chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Fetus and Newborn.

Claire Wendland MD is an associate professor in the Departments of Anthropology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Medical History & Bioethics at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist on the Navajo reservation for years before turning to medical anthropology.

Wendland has a longstanding interest in the entanglements of evidence and ethics in obstetrics: how people marshal evidence selectively to support ethical claims and “common-sense” conclusions about appropriate and inappropriate practices. In a recently published article in the Journal of Clinical Ethics, she argued that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists treats home birth as an ethical exception, not consistent with either the evidence or with ACOG’s own principles as clearly stated in other contexts. An ethically consistent policy would require obstetricians to provide respectful antenatal care for women wishing to have home births, refer them to the best available providers, provide appropriate consultation, and work towards smooth transfers when necessary.

Wendland’s primary ongoing anthropological research focuses on medical expertise in African settings. In A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School (Chicago 2010), the first ethnography of a medical school in the global South, Wendland described the intellectual and professional journeys of Malawian medical students over the course of their studies. Her current research project, again in Malawi, explores explanations for maternal death in a context in which mortality rates are very high while the uncertainties surrounding any given death are substantial.