In the face of increasing home birth rates and declining maternal health outcomes in hospitals, society owes it to families to ensure safe birth options, regardless of the setting.
More than 50,000 cases of midwifery-led care will now be available to researchers thanks to the validation of the MANA stats 4.0 dataset. This key achievement makes MANA Stats by far the largest available dataset on physiologic birth and midwife-led care in the United States. Of particular interest to researchers is that MANA stats is based on medical records, which are considered to be the "gold standard" of health care research.
The Midwives Alliance Division of Research (DOR) is a volunteer group comprised of clinicians, academics, research and policy experts, and database developers. Together they work to increase knowledge about midwifery care and help midwives become more fluent in conducting research, critically appraising the available data, and incorporating the best available research findings into their practice.
Midwives Alliance is very happy to announce the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC) will be joining the United States Midwifery Education Regulation & Association (US MERA) coalition of midwifery organizations.
A new study on the safety of waterbirth was released in the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health on January 20, 2016, authored by MANA Division of Research Coordinator Council members, Drs. Marit Bovbjerg, Melissa Cheyney, and Courtney Everson. This study used data from the MANA Stats project (2004 to 2009) and reported on neonatal and maternal outcomes for 6,534 babies born underwater in home and birth center settings.
My name is Katelyn Edel, and I am the new intern for the Department of Research, where I work closely with Bruce Ackerman, Jen Brown, and Sarita Bennett.
The MANA and CfM Joint Position Statement on Water Immersion During Labor and Birth is a position paper written for a broad audience including midwives and other birthcare professionals, consumers, doulas, childbirth educators, and policy makers. It is co-authored by the Midwives Alliance of North America and Citizens for Midwifery.
I am your Director of Events, Nicole Marie White, CPM. I am from Michigan and currently working as a member of the Coalition to License Certified Professional Midwives in Michigan. We just passed the house in December!
In the past month, two new studies have been released - one in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the other in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ)- examining out-of-hospital birth outcomes. The CMAJ study examined 2006-09 provincial health records while the NEJM study analyzed two years of Oregon vital statistics data.
