Birth Justice Briefing on the National Academy's Birth Settings Report February 2020

A bi-partisan Congressional committee commissioned “an evidence-based analysis of the complex findings in the research on birth settings, focusing particularly on health outcomes experienced by sub-populations of women.” The report, Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access and Choice was released on 2/6/20 by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

The National Academies (initially established by an act of Congress by President Lincoln) exists to provide nonpartisan, objective guidance for decision makers (including members of Congress) on pressing national issues. This report has the potential to move the needle on issues of access to high-quality birth care in all settings for people of color.

Two of the committee members, Melissa Cheyney, PhD, LDM, and Wendy Gordon DM, MPH, CPM, LM, reached out to Elephant Circle to offer a briefing to the Birth Justice community, with the goal of answering questions you may have about the findings. Elephant Circle hosted the National Academies Birth Settings Briefing for Birth Justice Leaders on Sunday, February 9, at 2:00 EDT (11:00 am Pacific; 12:00 pm Mountain; 1:00 Central). Here is an audio recording (there were no slides). Here is a video of the Zoom call.

For more information on the National Academies report, here is their press release about it.

The report was officially released in a webinar on Thursday, February 6, at 1 pm EDT hosted by the National Academies: Assessing Health Outcomes by Birth Settings. The webinar recording and slides are both now available here.

The free download of the report is available here.

Biosketches of the committee members can be found here.

In the Birth Justice briefing representation in the workforce came up. Folks might be interested in checking out this JMWH publication that will soon be available as open access for one year.

Also, in case you haven't seen it yet, VOX/ProPublica reporters Nina Martin and Julia Belluz are circulating a survey intended for parents who opted to birth at home.