California Nurse-Midwives Association
December 2019 | Newsletter
California Nurse-Midwives Foundation:
CNMA has fully launched California Nurse-Midwives Foundation!! We have a diverse BOD which will grow over time as we work to fine tune our goals. Our mission includes supporting efforts to remove barriers to Nurse-Midwives in CA, address Birth Equity through efforts such as recruitment and support of students of color; and supporting innovative models of care in areas of great need. We are now able to accept donations and put them toward these important endeavors. Please send donations to: PO Box 458 Redwood Estates CA 95044
Midwives as Change Agents: A win for Reproductive and Maternal Health in Napa County!!
As many of you know from prior communication, CNMA advocated and sent letters to legislators, the Governor, and the Attorney General to halt the Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) between Queen of the Valley and St Joseph’s Hospital in Napa County. We also worked with our partners in the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom to challenge this JOA. In this JOA, there would have been consolidation of service lines and further restrictions placed on the provision of reproductive and maternal health due to the religious directives that prohibit contraception, abortion, tubal ligation, in-virto fertilization services and gender non-conforming care. There are already incredible restrictions that exist in Napa for these services. The Attorney General rejected this merger. Speaking up for what is right does make a difference and as CNMs, we need to use our voice to advocate for those who are often marginalized in these discussions. We are thrilled with the Attorney General’s decision!! See the link below for further information.
Kathleen Belzer, CNMA President.
Coming soon: CNMA partnership with Professional Education Center to provide online CEU talks
We are excited to announce that we will be offering online CEUs starting 2020. We are partnering with Profession Education Center, who will help to provide the highest quality content as well as make sure your receive your CEUs! If you are interested in being a speaker, please submit your information here. We are looking forward for this amazing opportunity to make great content readily available to our community!
AB 5: Will This Impact Your Practice??
AB5 was recently signed into law (Gig Economy Bill). This bill attempts to protect workers, especially those in the Gig Economy, but it will affect many industries and individuals who fill out a 1099 form. If you feel this will impact you and you have concerns as a CNM, please contact us so we can discuss the implications of this on your employment or your ability to hire other CNMs as independent contractors. There is currently an effort under way to create exemptions for APRNs and we need as much information as possible in terms of who this will impact and in what manner. Please reach out to kathleen.belzer@gmail.com.
Voice of America: A video addressing Preeclampsia and highlighting Alise Howe CNM, one of our newly certified members!
Alise offers a comprehensive overview of the pathophysiology of Preeclampsia. We are extremely proud of her efforts! The filming took place in Washington DC when CNMA visited the Capitol. Thank you Alise!! https://youtu.be/8-bUxDMngow
Message from Seed Global Health. Opportunity for CNMs in Malawi and Uganda
As a Seed Global Health (Seed) Midwife Educator, there would be an incredible opportunity for you to contribute to 5-year locally designed partnerships between Seed, academic institutions, clinical sites, and even policy makers to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes in Malawi and Uganda.
In Uganda, for example, the Ministry of Health is prioritizing emergency care country-wide. One nursing institution is partnering with a local hospital in the development of a Masters in Midwifery program that will integrate basic Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) in response to the needs of its community. Faculty, students and practicing midwives will benefit from the EmONC training which will allow them to apply critical thinking and clinical skills that will empower them to save lives and train others with skills to do the same.
To support these partnerships, Seed has been asked to send Seed Midwife Educators for one-year placements to share their teaching and clinical expertise in midwifery and basic EmONC care with students, clinicians and faculty.
While the work and activities of the Seed Midwife Educators will be different between partnerships and across years, the common experience of Seed Educators is anchored in the collaborative and responsive relationships that are built with students, faculty and communities to strengthen health systems and save lives.
Be a part of the collaboration, sharing knowledge, saving lives.
Please share this unique opportunity with your networks, forwarding this email or posting this flyer within your departments for faculty, graduating residents, fellows and anyone who you think would be interested.
Director of Nursing & Midwifery
New Curriculum from Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health!
Innovating Education in Reproductive Health, a program of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, is excited to announce the release of our new curriculum! Structures & Self: Advancing Equity and Justice in Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare is a learner-led, justice-informed curriculum designed to teach clinical learners to consider how systems of power and legacies of structural oppression impact their care for patients. Learners will contemplate how to leverage their privilege to create change on a clinical, community, and systemic level.
We are asking you to help advance equity and justice in medicine by:
Retweeting posts from @IERHatUCSF
Posting about and linking to the curriculum on your organization’s social media
Incorporating this curriculum into staff trainings
Attached you will find a social media toolkit with video clips to help spread the word about this new content! If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Cassandra Carver, MPA (she / her)
Program and Outreach Coordinator, Innovating Education
UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health
Our friends at Essential Access Health are hosting their 35th annual Women’s Health Update on February 25 + 26 in Los Angeles.
CA Protecting Immigrant Families campaign has released an incredible resource client facing information on public charge now translated into 22 languages! You can access them via the CA PIF google folder, here. Please Share widely!
Stop Religious Restrictions in Health Care at UC!
As you may recall, through our partnership and mobilization effort, we were able to pressure UCSF into backing away from an extensive affiliation plan with Dignity Health, a hospital system that makes health care decisions based on religious doctrine rather than the needs of patients. While calling off that deal as planned, UC maintained other plans to affiliate with Dignity Health on services such as psychiatry, primary care, and cancer care, all of which can be affected by the religious restrictions imposed by Dignity Health and other hospital systems.
Since the deal was halted, we also learned through a Public Records Act request, that every single UC campus with a medical center has already made agreements with religious hospitals that include language specifically requiring UC providers to comply with religious restrictions on care. Now, UC has established a new task force to develop guidelines for affiliations with other medical institutions.
Read more about the existing affiliation contracts in a new fact sheet here, and as covered by the LA Times yesterday here.
Thus, it’s time to weigh in again and demand that the UC end current affiliations that would subject UC faculty, staff, trainees, students, or patients to religious restrictions on care—and to refrain from entering into new ones!
The ACLU, NHELP, and NCLR sent letters last week to UCSF, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, and UC San Diego expressing ongoing concerns about the existence of current contracts and plans for future affiliations that would restrict access to reproductive health care and gender affirming care for transgender patients. We’ll be reaching out in early December for another mobilization push and we hope we can count on your help!
In the meantime, if you’re a UC student, faculty member, patient, or alumni, please sign and share this petition demanding the UC end current and avoid future affiliations that restrict access to care based on religious doctrine.
Questions? News? Want to get involved?
That's all for this month's issue. Catch you next time!
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