This session is presented by Nicolle Gonzales, CNM
Off Roading: Addressing Maternal & Reproductive Healthcare Needs In Developing Healthcare Deserts
While countries around the world work to improve maternal health in healthcare deserts through training and technology, the United States is still far behind in the fight for Human Rights in childbirth and personhood. Too often the hang ups of institutional racism and burnout limit our capacity to think outside the box and shift the paradigm. But what if this is all just a recipe for innovation in midwifery practice and organizational design?
As old ways of thinking and working no longer fit to address the emerging maternal & reproductive health crisis, what are we left to do next? We are creative and powerful agents of change that exerts influence on the systems we engage and uphold. Now is the time for shared leadership, justice-based frameworks and ecological principles. Midwifery is a change making agent, we can design organizations and midwifery practices to address our current community needs. This will be an in depth discussion on the implications of Off Roading to address Maternal and Reproductive Healthcare needs in developing healthcare deserts.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to:
- Understand the impact of health disparities on the communities they are serving.
- The role health policies play on access to services and funding.
- Define regenerative design for changemaking.
- Understand the importance of problem solving as part of the design.
- Conceptualize creating innovative teams and organizational design to address complex problems.
Presenter
Nicolle Gonzales, CNM
Nicolle Gonzales is a Dine’ Nurse-Midwife from the Navajo Nation, she is the Founder and Health Policy Director of Changing Woman Initiative, which has the mission to empower diverse indigenous communities to protect cultural birth resiliency and the fundamental indigenous human right to reproductive health, dignity & justice. Nicolle is internationally known as the leading Native American Maternal Health expert who uses her knowledge, skills, and wisdom as a nurse-midwife to inform innovative changes to maternal health, policy, and community wellness. She presently serves as the Board Treasurer for the Groundswell Foundation with the years of experience in organizational development, fundraising, and leadership development, Nicolle is now the CEO of Transcending Strategies LLC, which works towards systems change in maternal and reproductive health, personal leadership development, and Indigenous health policy reform.
Introduction
Dr. Erin Tenney, DNP, CNM, WHNP, APRN
Dr. Erin Tenney is a Certified Nurse-midwife (CNM) and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner (WHNP) living with her two young children on Anishinaabe lands in rural northern Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior. For over twenty years she has lived on or near Native American reservations in the U.S. and Canada and has provided maternal and child health nursing, clinical midwifery and full-scope women’s health care services to Indigenous women and families.
Erin is an alumni of Frontier Nursing University, and has served as didactic and clinical faculty as well as Interim Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer. She is currently the Course Coordinator of Principles of Health Promotion.
She has served as Chair of the DEI Curriculum subcommittee and liaison to the Curriculum Committee, is a member of the Student, Faculty, Staff and Preceptor Development and Retention subcommittee of the DEI Task Force and has been on the planning committee for the Diversity Impact conference for the past several years. As Interim CDIO, Erin had the opportunity to coordinate an interdisciplinary group in completing the President’s Report of the Mary Breckinridge Task Force.