Sally Tracy AM is an Australian midwife, midwifery researcher, author and activist. She has authored numerous research articles. In 2023, she was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia.
In the first two decades of the 2000s, Tracy was at the forefront of midwifery politics in Australia. She has challenged the Australian maternity system through research and practice development in a bid to get a better deal for women in childbirth. [1] She helped set up the Ryde Midwifery Caseload Practice, in Sydney, in 2003. Her research questions the acceptability of the increasing interference of obstetrics with the physiological birth process. [2]
Tracy is the Professor of Midwifery at the University of Sydney and the Royal Hospital for Women, Sydney and a Conjoint Professor, University of New South Wales, Sydney. [3] She is based at the Midwifery and Women's Health Research Unit at the Royal Hospital for Women, Randwick, Sydney. Her research projects include the safety of primary level (especially rural) maternity hospitals and Birth Centres in Australia and the evaluation of midwifery led units. [4] [5] She is currently the chief investigator on a large multicentre randomised controlled trial of caseload midwifery care, funded by a project grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. [6] The findings from this research demonstrated that caseload midwifery is cheaper and safer that fragmented care. [7] [8]
She was a joint author of the National Maternity Action Plan.She is the co-author of the main midwifery textbook in Australia, Midwifery - Preparation for Practice which is now in its third edition.
Tracy was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2023 King's Birthday Honours for "significant service to tertiary education, and to midwifery". [9]
Midwifery is the health science and health profession that deals with pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period, in addition to the sexual and reproductive health of women throughout their lives. In many countries, midwifery is a medical profession. A professional in midwifery is known as a midwife.
A home birth is a birth that takes place in a residence rather than in a hospital or a birthing center. They may be attended by a midwife, or lay attendant with experience in managing home births. Home birth was, until the advent of modern medicine, the de facto method of delivery. The term was coined in the middle of the 19th century as births began to take place in hospitals.
The National Maternity Action Plan (NMAP) is an Australian document prepared by maternity consumer groups to alter the way Governments fund and resource maternity services.
Dr Barbara Vernon is an Australian maternity activist and a government lobbyist who seeks to improve provisions for maternity services; in particular, she advocates for the use of midwives. Born in New South Wales, she moved to Canberra in the mid-1970s. She earned an Honours Degree in Political Science at the Australian National University and in 1997 was awarded a PhD in public policy from Griffith University in Brisbane, Queensland.
In the United States, a Certified Nurse-Midwife (CNM) is a nurse midwife who exceeds the International Confederation of Midwives' essential competencies for a midwife and is also an advanced practice registered nurse, having completed registered nursing and midwifery education leading to practice as a nurse midwife and credentialing as a Certified Nurse-Midwife. CNMs provide care of women across their lifespan, including pregnancy and the postpartum period, and well woman care and birth control. Certified Nurse-Midwives are recognized by the International Confederation of Midwives as a type of midwife in the U.S.
Sheila Helena Elizabeth Kitzinger MBE was a British natural childbirth activist and author on childbirth and pregnancy. She wrote more than 20 books and had a worldwide reputation as a passionate and committed advocate for change.
Ruth Watson Lubic, CNM, EdD, FAAN, FACNM, is an American nurse-midwife and applied anthropologist who pioneered the role of nurse-midwives as primary care providers for women, particularly in maternity care. Lubic is considered to be one of the leaders of the nurse-midwifery movement in the United States.
Midwives in the United States assist childbearing women during pregnancy, labor and birth, and the postpartum period. Some midwives also provide primary care for women including well-woman exams, health promotion, and disease prevention, family planning options, and care for common gynecological concerns. Before the turn of the 20th century, traditional midwives were informally trained and helped deliver almost all births. Today, midwives are professionals who must undergo formal training. Midwives in the United States formed the Midwifery Education, Regulation, and Association task force to establish a framework for midwifery.
Mary Francis Hill Coley was an American lay midwife who ran a successful business providing a range of birth services and who starred in a critically acclaimed documentary film used to train midwives and doctors. Her competence projected an image of black midwives as the face of an internationally esteemed medical profession, while working within the context of deep social and economic inequality in health care provided to African Americans. Her life story and work exist in the context of Southern granny midwives who served birthing women outside of hospitals.
A direct-entry midwife is a midwife who has become credentialed without first becoming a nurse. There are direct-entry midwifery programs that prepare students to become Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs) or Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs). Certified Professional Midwives are known for being "more natural and less intervention oriented." In other words, these midwives typically work outside of the hospital setting in homes and birth centers and do not employ methods for childbirth that physicians in hospitals commonly use such as caesarean section, forceps and other types of equipment and drugs.
A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery.
Ronnie Sue Lichtman, is a midwife, educator, writer and advocate for women's health. She has published widely for both lay and professional audiences. The Chair of the Midwifery Education Program at The State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center in New York City, she earned a Ph.D. in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and her MS in Maternity Nursing with a specialization in midwifery from Columbia University School of Nursing. She previously directed the midwifery programs at Columbia University and Stony Brook University.
Midwives in South Africa are nurses who focus on the care of pregnant women and the delivery of babies. Midwives have the ability to work independently in cases of healthy pregnancies and problem-free deliveries; however, they can refer patients to gynaecologists or obstetricians when complications are diagnosed. The majority of pregnant women in South Africa use the public healthcare system, and most of this care is provided by midwives.
Donna Hartz is an Aboriginal Australian midwife, academic and member of the Kamilaroi peoples of north eastern New South Wales. She grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney.
Jane Sandall is professor of social science and women's health at the Women's Health Academic Centre of King's College London. Sandall leads the Maternal Health Services and Policy Research Group in King's Health Partners Women’s Health Academic Centre and is also a lead for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) South London Applied Research Collaboration. She has authored several Cochrane reviews on midwife-led settings and hundreds of peer-reviewed papers. Her contribution to midwifery and women's health was awarded with an CBE. She also received an honorary doctorate in health sciences from the University of Technology Sydney in 2014.
Caroline Susan E. Homer is an Australian midwifery researcher and international advocate for women's health rights. She is Co-Program Director, Maternal and Child Health at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne and Visiting Distinguished Professor of Midwifery at the University of Technology Sydney.
Joan Elsa Donley was a Canadian-born New Zealand nurse and midwife. Donley was a key figure who shaped midwifery and the home birth movement in New Zealand.
Mary Kirkpatrick was a pioneer of women's healthcare and the first trained midwife on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. She established the first private maternity hospital, eventually establishing three more. Kirkpatrick worked with and mentored many of the midwives and nurses who followed her to the coast.
Beverley Ann Lawrence Beech was a Welsh author, chair of the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS) from 1977 to 2017 and an active campaigner against the medicalisation of pregnancy and birth. She raised awareness of the harm that can be done to women in obstetrics during labour and the importance of women being aware of their rights so they can make their own decisions about the place and manner of the birth of their children. She also counselled for a more positive attitude towards home births.
Susan Crowther is a British–New Zealand academic midwife, and is a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology, specialising in midwifery, birthing experiences and employing an hermeneutic phenomenology approach. She was previously a professor at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.