VIDM 2024 Programme

Title: Wombs and Wildfires: Community Based Maternal and Newborn Health and the Climate Crisis

Speakers: Skye Wheeler and Aver Yakubu

Facilitator(s): Isabella Garti and Ayele Bali (Shadow)

Abstract:

The climate crisis is the major public health crisis of our time. Pregnant people and newborns are especially vulnerable to the fossil-fuel driven disasters undermining communities across the globe, and a growing body of science points to associations between
climate impacts including extreme heat, wildfires, other disasters, and higher rates of poor maternal health including preterm birth, low birth weight and stillbirth. The session will provide an overview of some of the best academic science and community reporting
on the intersection of climate and maternal and newborn health and recent positioning on the issue by major international organizations, including UN agencies. Skye Wheeler, from Human Rights Watch, will provide insights into extreme heat in Pakistan and other
LMICs and why research is showing additional vulnerabilities associated with physical work and care work including mothering newborns and other children. She will also talk about why extreme heat is relevant to the Black maternal health crisis in the US. Aver
Yakubu, from Nuturely, will provide a deeper dive into wildfire impacts on maternal and newborn health and recent learnings from research in Oregon state, a highly wildfire-impacted state in the US. Both will discuss current best practices and thinking, what
more we need to learn, and why community-based and culturally competent care is so crucial as part of the way forward out of this crisis towards a more sustainable future.

Check the time in your location: https://bit.ly/VIDM24-session-04

Access zoom link here: https://frontier.zoom.us/j/86435602097?pwd=XwhWAOJ6ro6VSSzKpzGgaqdOH1VEbY.1

Recording: TBA

Title: The Midwifery Sustainability Project: a strategic priority for the Association of Ontario Midwives

Speakers: Elizabeth Brandeis and Remi Ejiwunmi

Facilitator(s): Jane Houston

Abstract:
This presentation by ‘Remi Ejiwunmi, RM MSc, Chair of the Association of Ontario Midwives’ Midwifery Sustainability Project Steering Committee, and Elizabeth Brandeis, RM MSc, Staff Lead of the Midwifery Sustainability Project, will describe the trends and conditions in Ontario midwifery that are leading to unprecedented rates of burnout and attrition from the profession. The presentation will provide a brief overview of Ontario midwifery within a publicly funded model in which midwives work mainly in community-based, midwife-led practice groups and provide choice of birthplace including home and hospital birth, and in some communities, the option of free-standing birth centres. It will then explore the current state of midwifery and situate it within an evidence-based framework of the systemic factors that act as enablers or barriers to midwifery sustainability. The presentation will include a description of the first phase of the Midwifery Sustainability Project, the focus of which has been to understand the scope of the issue of sustainability for midwives. The presenters will then describe how the project will move from research to action to address the barriers to midwifery sustainability in Ontario.

Check the time in your location: https://bit.ly/VIDM24-session-20

Access: https://frontier.zoom.us/j/86137235423?pwd=ObXSq9nBNoYj6qOK1y4ZVy5GMQzLun.1

Recording: TBA