235199 Marginalized Majority and the Call to Action

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Diana Jolles, CNM MS , School of Nursing, Texas Woman's University, Corpus Christi, TX
Women in the United States have experienced advances in educational, professional and personal opportunity over the last 30 years. Young girls are taught that they can do anything they dream of: become an astronaught, a doctor, a writer, the president! Yet, over 4 million women in the United States enter the perinatal care system annually and their needs are marginalized. The message that they are capable, strong, physiologically fit is NOT given. Instead, our medicalized model of childbirth ushers individuals through our disease care system with unsafe, unethical, and inhumane results. The following presentation reviews social factors and solutions. A qualitative study of two generations of women, relying on resilience and cultural strength will be included in the discussion to demonstrate the lifecourse value of providing perinatal care in systems which are built around families, promote dignity, shared decision making and non-intervention. The conclusion summarizes national, regional, and the qualitative findings for use by consumers, clinicians, purchasers and health policy makers.

Learning Areas:
Other professions or practice related to public health
Social and behavioral sciences
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Participants will explain benchmark social advances which have occured in the last thirty years related to the education, professional development and social advances of women in the United States while contrasting the decline in the populations success with physiologic childbirth. Participants will name five perinatal indicators demonstrating failure of our culture to succeed with safe, physiologic childbirth. Learners will evaluate data, innovative programs, and societal facts to identify three ways families, health policy makers, and perinatal care systems can respond to the urgent need to protect and promote the physiologic birth process.

Keywords: Accountability, Maternal and Child Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been a public health nurse-midwife and researcher for eleven years. The social context of birth in our country limits the lifecourse of women and I am driven to raise awareness as the facts are not understood in a widespread manner.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Individual and health care provider approaches to building healthy communities for women
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