What is the Health Policy Summit?
Enhanced access to highly trained, nationally accredited, and licensed CNMs and CMs offers the US a viable solution to reducing maternal mortality, filling the workforce shortage gap, and increasing access to unbiased high-quality care. Yet, midwives remain mostly underutilized. Regulatory and legislative barriers that include physician supervision restrictions, prescriptive authority, and out-of-hospital birth legislation, among others, hamper access to midwifery care.
ACNM has an enormous potential to improve this country’s laws as they relate to midwifery, and by doing so, to improve the lives of mothers and infants in the US. Beyond lending its clinical excellence to women and infants through the practice of midwifery, CNMs and CMs must advocate for legislation that will fund accredited midwifery education programs, grow and diversify the maternity care workforce, enhance maternal health care provided by public health programs, and eliminate disparities in access to maternal health care.
The Health Policy Summit is designed to support the advancement of public policy impacting the midwifery profession and the people midwives serve. The meeting will provide midwives with an opportunity to learn how to effectively communicate the importance of proposed legislation impacting the midwifery profession including: Midwives for Maximizing Optimal Maternity Services Act (Midwives for MOMS Act), the Birth Access Benefitting Improved Essential Facility Services (BABIES) Act, the Improving Care and Access to Nurses Act and the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act.
Participants at this educational event will also learn about the health care policies impacting midwifery, and develop the skills needed to advocate for the profession in meetings with legislators during ACNM’s Hill Day and back home at your state capital.
Who should attend?
This Summit is intended for new and seasoned midwives, nurses and maternal health stakeholders who are seeking to understand legislative and regulatory trends impacting maternal and infant care, remain informed of the status of legislation affecting midwifery clinical practices and access to care, and utilize their voice and other resources to support ACNM positions on midwifery care.
Program Overview
The summit will enable attendees to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of the interdependence of policy and practice.
- Describe current state and federal policies that support the scope of practice for midwives.
- Advocate and understand the importance of engaging key stakeholders to address ethical policies that promote access, equity, quality, cost, and safe practice environments.
- Understand policy making at multiple levels and the significance of individual and collective contributions in shaping public policy.
- Analyze ethical, legal, and social factors influencing public policy development.
Sample educational topics include:
- An Analysis of the Current Status of Maternal Health Policies
- Advocating for Your Profession on the State Level
- Points of Influence in the Federal Law-Making Process
- Political Forecast: Beyond Health Care―Foreshadowing on the priorities of the 118th Congress
Continuing education credits will be offered for this conference.