Speaker: Nonkululeko Shibula
Facilitator: Rizka Ayu Setyani
As a bereaved parent, I bring a unique perspective to the essential connections midwives foster during perinatal loss. This presentation explores the intersection of family support systems, community networks, and cultural connections in bereavement care, highlighting how midwives can play a transformative role in these deeply personal and communal experiences.
This session aims to inspire midwives to recognize the power of connection in their work, ensuring that bereaved families receive compassionate, culturally sensitive, and comprehensive holistic support. By embracing these relationships, midwives can help shape healing narratives for families while fostering a more interconnected approach to care.
Drawing on lived experiences and collaborative initiatives, the session emphasizes the importance of integrating parent voice advocates into bereavement care. These advocates provide crucial insights that help midwives navigate cultural sensitivities, break taboos, and create environments of trust and healing.
Through personal stories and case studies, we demonstrate how midwives, alongside parents and communities, can foster meaningful connections that promote emotional, spiritual, and cultural understanding. Initiatives such as peer support programs and culturally sensitive frameworks offer pathways for midwives to build bridges between clinical care and the relational aspects of family and community.
Speakers: Rachael Ame Maima and Linda Deys
Facilitator: Caroline Maringa/Nyambura
Maternal and newborn mortality rates in Papua New Guinea are among the highest in the world, with around 170 deaths for every 100, 000 women and 20 neonatal deaths per 1000 live births each year. The causes for many of these deaths are preventable or treatable when women have equal access to safe, quality health care. Lack of midwives and resources increases the impact for remote communities but also for those living in cities such as Port Moresby.
In April 2024 the fourth group of the PNG Midwifery Leadership Buddy Project met in Port Moresby with 14 PNG and 7 Australian midwifery mentors, aiming to improve maternal and newborn outcomes in PNG. This twinning program of the PNG Midwifery Society and the Australian College of Midwives is funded by Rotary and informed by the ICM Member Association Capacity Assessment Tool (MACAT). PNG buddies identified quality improvement projects within their workplaces, with the Australian midwives supporting the development of leadership and advocacy skills for the projects to be completed.
This presentation will introduce one of the 2024 buddy relationships and project which aimed to increase the known haemoglobin level of women accessing antenatal care in a clinic in Port Moresby. It will describe the importance of a known Hb and demonstrate the processes, challenges, successes and setbacks experienced and highlight the importance of resilience and patience. It will emphasise how professional midwifery connections and mentorship can promote leadership, improve maternity outcomes, and strengthen the role of midwives across countries.
Speaker: Kate Greenstock
Facilitator: Ally Anderson
Merely existing as a midwife in much of the world is a political act, flourishing collectively is our outrageous next step!
At its core, flourishing means staying connected to ourselves – and to each other – even as we face the psychological challenges of this work. Experiences of trauma exposure and moral injury connect us as global midwives despite our differing contexts. And yet they so often disconnect us from ourselves and the families we serve.
Our time together will acknowledge the realities AND explore how we go on sustaining ourselves in midwifery by proactively connecting to our purpose, our power, our body, our breath. Just as we ground and encourage a woman in labour, come be grounded and encouraged!
Speakers: Ronny Valenzuela, Vicki Penwell & Vijaya Krishnan
Facilitator: Adebukunola Olajumoke Afolabi
Collaboration is a cornerstone of effective, safe, and respectful maternity care. The International Childbirth Initiative framework centers the role of midwives in the provision of respectful care and creates a space to allow for increased understanding and promotion of midwifery across countries where midwifery has not been integrated. The goal of the Initiative is to promote practices that allow for safe physiological birth, including promotion of the midwifery philosophy and access to continuous support. The need for midwives is greater than ever as globally we observe a trend of increasing maternal mortality and sharply increasing rates of cesarean birth.
This panel will introduce the Initiative, with midwives speaking from participating health facilities in Chile, India, and the Philippines about their experiences of collaborating with their community, physicians, nurses, administrators, and policy makers through the Initiative’s platform.
Speaker: Carla Godoy
Facilitator: Susana Ku
Las parteras desempeñan un papel fundamental en la salud y el bienestar de nuestras comunidades, pero han enfrentan desafÃos como la falta de reconocimiento, apoyo institucional y oportunidades laborales. Es esencial fortalecer su rol, generar empleo y garantizar el respeto por su labor.
Más que un oficio, ser partera es una vocación que implica acompañar a las madres en momentos cruciales con profesionalismo y seguridad. Sin embargo, a pesar de su importancia histórica, muchas veces no reciben el reconocimiento que merecen. Para cambiar esta realidad, es clave impulsar oportunidades laborales en hospitales, clnicas y programas comunitarios de salud.
La solución pasa por la organización, la creación de redes de apoyo y la búsqueda de alianzas con el sector público y privado. Al unir fuerzas, es posible reducir el desempleo dentro de la comunidad de parteras y asegurar que su labor sea vista como indispensable para el bienestar social.
El camino hacia un mayor reconocimiento y estabilidad laboral requiere compromiso y trabajo conjunto. La unión de las parteras es su mayor fortaleza para lograr que su profesión sea valorada y esencial en la sociedad.
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Midwives play a fundamental role in the health and well-being of our communities, but they have faced challenges such as a lack of recognition, institutional support, and job opportunities. It is essential to strengthen their role, create jobs, and ensure respect for their work.
More than a profession, being a midwife is a vocation that involves accompanying mothers in crucial moments with professionalism and confidence. However, despite their historical importance, they often do not receive the recognition they deserve. To change this reality, it is key to promote job opportunities in hospitals, clinics, and community health programs.
The solution lies in organization, the creation of support networks, and the pursuit of partnerships with the public and private sectors. By joining forces, it is possible to reduce unemployment within the midwifery community and ensure that their work is seen as indispensable to social well-being.
The path to greater recognition and job stability requires commitment and collaborative work. The unity of midwives is their greatest strength in ensuring that their profession is valued and essential in society.
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Speakers: Marjolein Pijnappels and Susana Ku Carbonell
Facilitator: Catherine Salam
The Birth Future International Project explores innovative future scenarios for birth care, grounded in developments shaped by birthing communities and midwives as key agents of change. This study employs a qualitative method approach, integrating traditional participatory research methodologies with innovative, arts-based practices to guide participants through immersive processes of exploration and co-creation. Our cross-cultural sampling includes midwives from the Netherlands and Peru 90 , alongside service users from India, offering diverse perspectives on the evolving dynamics of birth care.
Our data analysis is based on action research analysis. Preliminary data analysis has informed the development of a zine, which synthesizes participant contributions into an accessible, creative format. This zine unveils a transformative vision for birth care, such as different ways of developing perinatal technology (technology for autonomy, rather than control), the role of the community in which birth (care) is embedded, addressing systemic injustice and inequality in global north and south, midwives as educated birth advocates/portals for bridging new ways of (birth) care, those articulated through critical reflections on participants’ lived experiences and current practices. Participants then identified innovative, community-centered care models that emphasize equity, cultural responsiveness, and inclusivity. Furthermore, the preliminary findings underscore the potential of participatory, arts-based research to amplify underrepresented voices and foster critical discourse on the future of maternal and newborn care.
By integrating interdisciplinary methodologies and global perspectives, this study contributes to the growing body of literature on the co-creation of equitable, humane, and sustainable birth care practices.
