Midwifery Thinks! Symposium

April Ward, MSN, CNM has completed all work for the Doctorate in Midwifery  (D.M.) degree and will graduate in August, 2021. Her advances in midwifery project focuses on collaborating with a rural Old Order Mennonite community in New York to improve access to care responsive to the community as health care options constrict in the area. A practicing midwife since 2002, she has worked in a variety of settings including a Federally Qualified Health Center, tertiary and community hospitals, and homes. In 2014, she opened a private practice specializing in integrative women's health care across the lifespan. April has a special interest in the dynamic relationship between nutrition and women's hormonal health. She has spoken at corporate and community events, and is involved with organizations promoting women's entrepreneurial success in upstate New York.

Thamarah Crevecoeur, CNM, DrPH is a midwife in Boston. She received the Carrington-Hsia-Nieves Doctoral Scholarship for Midwives of Color in 2020.  Fluent in English, Haitian, and Creole, Dr. Crevecoeur uses her public health and midwifery expertise to work with the Haitian immigrant community to improve access to culturally and linguistically appropriate health care.

Julie Blumenfeld, DNP, CNM, IBCLC, FACNM
Dr. Julie Blumenfeld is a Certified Nurse-Midwife and Board-Certified Lactation Consultant. She began her work in healthcare as a Peace Corps volunteer. She practices midwifery at Capital Health in Trenton, New Jersey, and is the Chair of the Midwifery Section. In addition to her clinical responsibilities, Julie is dedicated to serving the community in Trenton. She is the clinical consultant for a Spanish language community doula program. Additionally, she serves on the NJ Board of Medical Examiners Midwifery Liaison Committee and the NJ Maternal Mortality Review Committee. Julie is active in the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) at both the local and national levels. She is the president of the New Jersey Affiliate of the ACNM. She serves on the ACNM State Government Affairs Committee and Alliance for Innovation in Maternal Health.  Julie holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice from Rutgers University where she is adjunct faculty in the Department of Midwifery.

Teresita Carrasquillo moved from Puerto Rico to New Jersey with her husband and three children in 2001. She was trained and certified as a labor doula, childbirth educator, and teen educator with Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association (CAPPA) in 2015. In 2016, Teresita began doing volunteer work at the Children's Home Society of New Jersey (CHSNJ). She offered childbirth classes in Spanish to the participants of the CUNA program and also supported many families from the Hispanic community in Trenton during labor and birth as a volunteer doula. The CUNA program provides linguistically and culturally appropriate prenatal health, education, and support to the Latinx community of Mercer County New Jersey in a welcoming, supportive environment. In 2018, Teresita began working as a consultant for the CHSNJ to plan Apoyando Madres/Armando Redes (AMAR, or Supporting Mothers/Creating Networks) Community-Based Doula Program. In 2019, Teresita was hired as the doula supervisor for AMAR. AMAR Community-Based Doula Program has served 65 Hispanic families from Trenton and the doulas have welcomed 53 healthy babies. Teresita loves to support families from the community during pregnancy, labor, birth, and the postpartum period, and feels very blessed to have the opportunity to do so.

Maritza I. Raimundi-Petroski (she/her/Ella) is the Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives, Prevention Programs, and Community Engagement at The Children’s Home Society of New Jersey (CHSofNJ), where she has built a career for nearly 15 years. Before becoming Vice-President at CHSofNJ, she was CHSofNJ’s Division Director for Maternal Child Health, Family, and Community Support Services. She has worked in nonprofit management for over 24 years. She has expertise in organizational development, program design, program implementation, and contract management, including serving as the Chief Program Officer for a multi-million dollar county-wide Community Action Agency in New Jersey. She currently serves as a Board Member for the Trenton Health Team’s Board of Trustees, a member of the Womanspace’s Community Advisory Board, a member of the Horizon NJ Health Hispanic Advisory Group, and a member of the American Translators Association. In the capacity of VP, she leads a team of exceptional professionals, and she’s responsible for contract management and administration of programs in Mercer, Ocean, and Monmouth Counties. 

Maritza just completed the first inaugural cohort of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s Learning to Applied Practice: Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression program in 2021 along with other professionals across the country and recently completed her Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace Certificate at the University of South Florida’s MUMA College of Business. She received her training and certification as a Community Health Worker from the School of Public Health, Management, and Labor Relations at Rutgers University and her Family Development Credential from the School of Social Work’s Institute for Families at Rutgers. Maritza earned a Master in Public Administration with a concentration in nonprofit management from the Graduate School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers-Newark and a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the same institution. Maritza is a HISPA (Hispanics Inspiring Student’s Performance and Achievement) Role Model and a member of the Center for Hispanic Policy Research and Development, a recently created Alumni Association. Maritza is also the co-founder of MAPA Collaborative, LLC. This management consulting firm provides expert-based advice to individuals and organizations seeking to improve performance, create strategies and optimize operations.

Barbara Hackley, PhD, CNM, FACNM was the founding director of the Doctorate in Midwifery, the first discipline-specific doctoral program for midwifery in the nation. Over her career, she has served as a faculty member at Georgetown, Columbia, and Yale Universities. She has been the recipient of numerous awards recognizing her teaching abilities, scholarly work, and clinical expertise in expanding critical services such as mental health care, immunizations, asthma care, and obesity management to pregnant and postpartum women. More recently, she served as the Director of the Resiliency Initiative, South Bronx Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center in the South Bronx serving one of the poorest Congressional Districts in the nation. In that capacity, she created, implemented, and evaluated programs designed to mitigate toxic stress associated with poverty. Key elements of the Resiliency Initiative, a collaboration between nutrition, mental health, obstetric, midwifery, and pediatric providers, include screening for social determinants of health in prenatal and pediatric care, group perinatal care, linkages to community services, and maternal-infant dyadic therapy. Preliminary results of these programs are promising. Barb is excited to mentor doctoral students and have the opportunity to work together with other members of the Philadelphia and Thomas Jefferson communities to create health care and educational programs that encourage the development of new models of transdisciplinary transformational health care.

Judith Mercer, PhD, CNM, FACNM obtained her midwifery education at Columbia University graduating in 1974, and a doctorate from The Catholic University of America in 1989. She practiced midwifery in all settings throughout her career while focusing on midwifery education and serving as program director at Georgetown from 1980 to 1990. She has been funded by NIH four times for her work on the effects of delayed cord clamping for preterm and term infants and has presented her research worldwide. In 2014, she received the Hattie Hempschmeyer Award from ACNM. She was a former Research Scientist at Women & Infants Hospital, and an Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at Alpert School of Medicine, Brown University. Currently, she is Professor Emerita at the University of Rhode Island and Consultant at the Neonatal Research Institute at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns in San Diego where she is co-investigator with Dr. Anup Katheria on the MINVI Trial (Milking in Non-Vigorous Infants).

Helen McLachlan (RN, RM, MNUrs, PhD), is a Professor and Discipline Lead (Midwifery) in the College of Health, Science and Engineering at La Trobe University, and is a Registered Nurse and Midwife in Australia. She has led research into the development of innovative models of maternity care and was the lead investigator of the largest randomised controlled trial of caseload midwifery in the world. Her other research interests include Indigenous maternal and child health, breastfeeding, postnatal depression, midwifery education, and translating research into practice. She is currently leading a major Australian National Health and Medical Research Council-funded project which is evaluating the impact of caseload midwifery for Aboriginal women (a project which recently won a major award by the Victorian Government for Improving Aboriginal Health). Helen supervises PhD and Masters students in the areas of midwifery education, models of maternity care, early parenting, breastfeeding, perinatal depression, and maternity care for women with disabilities. She is also involved in teaching midwifery and maternal and child health students in the undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

Della Forster (DipAppSci, BAppSci, MMid, PhD) is a recognised international leader in researching maternal and infant health. She has a joint appointment as a Professor of Midwifery and Maternity Services Research at the Judith Lumley Centre, La Trobe University, and the Royal Women’s Hospital (RWH), and extensive experience as a clinical midwife. She is Director of the Midwifery and Maternity Services research Unit at the RWH, and Deputy Director of Research there. Della has extensive experience in conducting large, health service and community-based randomised controlled trials, state-wide surveys, and research translation projects, and expertise in quantitative research and mixed methods, with a focus on pregnancy, birth, the postnatal period, maternity services and models of maternity care. She currently holds Australian National Health and Medical Research Council grants in the areas of maternal health and wellbeing and models of midwifery care. Della has established research collaborations with peak community consumer organizations, a strong track record of consumer engagement in research, and is a leader in exploring women’s views, experiences, and outcomes across the maternity care episode. She also leads work exploring wellbeing among midwives, nurses, and others, and consistently includes work in clinician views and wellbeing in her large studies of maternity care.