Sara Wolfe

Last updated
Sara Wolfe
Born1973 (age 49–50)
Nationality Brunswick House First Nation, [1] Canadian
Education Rotman School of Management [1]
Occupation(s)nurse, midwife, healthcare advocate
Years active1999–present
Known forIndigenous midwifery

Sara Wolfe (born 1973) is an Anishnawbe registered nurse, registered midwife. [2] [3] She is the director of the Indigenous Innovation Initiative at Grand Challenges Canada. [1]

Contents

Wolfe is founding partner of Seventh Generation Midwives Toronto, [4] which is a group of midwives who offer maternity care to women, particularly those from Toronto's downtown area and from the Indigenous community. [5] Wolfe was a co-lead on the midwifery-led and Indigenous-governed Toronto Birth Centre. [6] Wolfe is Anishnawbe (Ojibway) from the Brunswick House First Nation in northern Ontario. [1] [7] [8]

Education

Wolfe earned her master’s in business administration from the Rotman School of Management [1] at the University of Toronto.

Career

From 1999 to 2003, Wolfe was an Outpost Nurse in Sioux Lookout and Moose Factory.

Wolfe, with her fellow Indigenous midwifery students Cheryllee Bourgeois and Ellen Blais, started the Toronto Aboriginal Midwives Initiative in 2002, and held community meetings and consultations to determine what the Native community wanted and needed. [9]

She worked as a midwife for the Midwives Collective Toronto [10] from 2003 to 2005. She was Head Midwife in the Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Sunnybrook Women's College Hospital from 2005 to January 2012. From November 2012 to December 2013 she was Interim Executive Director and Midwife Project Co-Lead at the Toronto Birth Centre Inc. The Toronto Birth Centre provides pre-natal classes, labour, birth and postpartum care, complimentary breast-feeding support, massage therapy and nutritional counselling. [11]

In collaboration with St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Wolfe and Seventh Generation Midwives took on a three-year research project to address infant mortality and child removal rates that are higher in Indigenous communities compared to the general population in Canada. Called The Baby Bundle Project, the goal of the research was to improve services for Indigenous families. [6] While identifying barriers to access, the research also worked to identify and provide for mothers' needs, such as midwifery, housing, counselling, or culturally specific traditions. [12] [13]

Wolfe co-led a four-year research project about Indigenous people in Toronto that identified undercounting by Statistics Canada. [14] [15] [16]

In 2020, the Indigenous Innovation Initiative, of which Sara Wolfe is the director, was launched. The goal is to promote Indigenous economic participation and innovation [17]

Select bibliography

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Sara Wolfe". Brookfield Institute. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  2. ↑ Mothers of the Nations: Indigenous Mothering as Global Resistance, Reclaiming and Recovery. Anderson, Kim, 1964-, Lavell-Harvard, D. Memee. Bradford, Ontario. ISBN   9781926452364. OCLC   959328002.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. ↑ Lee-Shanok, Philip (Jan 8, 2019). "New Regent Park program provides holistic support for new Indigenous moms". CBC.
  4. ↑ Seventh Generation Midwives
  5. ↑ "New report finds critical gap in data about Toronto's urban Indigenous community". CBC News. Retrieved 2018-08-22.
  6. 1 2 Lee-Shanok, Philip (2019-01-08). "New Regent Park program provides holistic support for new Indigenous moms". CBC News. Retrieved 2020-08-25.
  7. ↑ "SGMT - Our People". www.sgmt.ca/sara-wolfe/. Retrieved 2018-08-22.
  8. ↑ "In Ontario, midwives help with the rebirth of Indigenous pregnancy care" . Retrieved 2018-08-22.
  9. ↑ "Midwives help bring new life to Toronto" . Retrieved 2018-08-22.
  10. ↑ Midwives Collective Toronto
  11. ↑ "Ontario Newsroom". news.ontario.ca. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
  12. ↑ Easton, Megan (2019-04-24). "Delivering Help to Indigenous Parents | University of Toronto Magazine". University of Toronto Magazine. Archived from the original on 2021-01-26. Retrieved 2021-05-09.
  13. ↑ "TVO | Current affairs, documentaries and education". www.tvo.org. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
  14. ↑ Johnson, Rhiannon (Feb 28, 2018). "New report finds critical gap in data about Toronto's urban Indigenous community". CBC.
  15. ↑ Carter, Adam (Sep 30, 2021). "Indigenous people in Toronto badly undercounted by census, but experts hopeful for change". CBC.
  16. ↑ "Opinion | Census vastly undercounts Indigenous population in Toronto, study says". The Toronto Star. 2018-01-24. ISSN   0319-0781 . Retrieved 2021-11-03.
  17. ↑ Zingel, Avery (May 13, 2020). "Indigenous Innovation Initiative will award up to $250K to projects for gender equality". CBC News. Retrieved May 18, 2022.
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