We need science. We need policy rooted in evidence.
And we need to fund the people doing that work—especially when it centers equity, birth justice, and care.

Thanks for reading and for supporting this work. 💙

This is a big milestone in my dissertation work—and I’m proud.

But it’s also bittersweet. Public health research is underfunded, and science itself is being politicized and undermined.

Using an interrupted time series + synthetic control, we looked at the impact of Illinois’s 2006 reimbursement reform.

We found a sustained increase in CNM-attended births among Medicaid patients after pay equity took effect.

Midwives improve outcomes, especially for low-risk pregnancies. But in many states, Medicaid still pays them less than doctors for the same care.

That’s not just unfair—it limits access to the kind of care families want and need.

Equitable Medicaid Reimbursement Policies Increase Midwifery‐Led Births: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis With a Synthetic Control Group Introduction Birthing people in the United States suffer from poor pregnancy outcomes and a lack of perinatal care providers, especially nurse-midwives. Prenatal and intrapartum care by a certified .....

📄 New publication alert!
We found that when a policy required midwives and physicians to be reimbursed at the same rate under Medicaid, midwifery-led births increased.
Policy matters.
🔗 doi.org/10.1111/jmwh...