You are being invited to participate in a research study that examines Ontario’s response to maternity care needs through midwifery. Specifically you are being invited to participate in an interview about how the Ontario health system has assigned roles to midwifery. Your involvement would mean participating in a 30-60 minute in person or telephone interview to be scheduled at your convenience. During the interview, we will ask you questions about one or two policy directions of interest: 1) the creation of two midwifery-led birth centres in 2014 and/or 2) the recent primary care reform discussion paper (Patients first: a proposal to strengthen patient-centred health care in Ontario), which does not explicitly include midwives as part of the reform. You will be asked about what factors led to the creation of these policies, what stakeholders were involved in the decision-making process, what are the goals of the policies and (if applicable) what are the results being achieved.
Please see a letter of information that gives you full details about the study along with a consent form. If you would like to participate or have questions about the study before you make a decision, please contact Cristina Mattison (see contact details below).
Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
In the 1950s, Waterloo, ON midwife/nurse Elsie Cressman set up a leprosy clinic and helped deliver thousands of babies in Tanzania, Somalia, and Kenya. Elsie received the Order of Ontario for her advocacy of midwifery in Ontario. She died this past September. “Return to Africa” is an excellent documentary about her mission. Learn more »
This video features a diverse selection of midwives speaking about the different kinds of communities they serve. From Ellie, a community-based midwife in mid-coast Maine and Tuesday, who serves “plain church” families in Indiana to Saraswathi, a midwife in British Columbia and Kim who serves a variety of women in Ohio, including those considering VBACS, midwives provide safe, stellar care to women in the United States and Canada in all settings and all kinds of communities. Watch the video »
Twelve midwives from across the US and Canada describe that value of the relationship between midwives and women: assisting women who hope to have a VBAC (and the low rate of C-section midwives have!), supporting women who are survivors of sexual abuse/trauma to have healthy, empowering births – as well as the important role midwives play in supporting the entire family during birth – and provide education around reproductive health. Watch the video »
The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”. It has become widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and there are now 149 Laureates from 62 countries.
Ina May Gaskin, one of the leading midwives in United States, has received a Right Livelihood Award in 2011, and said the following in her inauguration speech:
“Most of us necessarily share an awareness of powerful forces that now threaten the continued existence of the profession of midwifery in many parts of the world. Rates of cesarean section are rising rapidly in most countries, far beyond the upper limits recommended by the World Health Organization. As cesarean rates increase, rates of maternal death and serious injury rise as well, and women’s fears of birth increase. At the same time, time-honored knowledge and skills begin to vanish. I have visited private hospitals in Brazil where the cesarean rate was 95%, because women (and their doctors) had become so afraid of the normal process of birth that the cesarean became the default.” Read more »
