In honor of the 40th anniversary of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing’s nurse-midwife degree program, Melissa Avery, Ph.D., C.N.M., R.N., director of the midwifery specialty, reflected on how nurse-midwifery has changed.
Midwives have been attending births for thousands of years.
“But in the United States in the early 1900s, as the field of medicine became more formalized and specialized, birth started moving to hospitals,” said Avery. Midwives began to play a lesser roll.
Great news for women everywhere: a woman’s employment status during pregnancy does not cause a negative impact on her baby’s health.
When comparing women who worked full-time while pregnant with women who were not employed while pregnant, full-time employment was not directly associated with preterm birth or low birth weight, found a recent University of Minnesota study.
The latest study was led by University of Minnesota researcher Katy Backes Kozhimannil, Ph.D., Division of Health Policy and Management, who partnered with fellow University of Minnesota researchers Laura B. Attanasio, B.A., Division of Health Policy and Management, Patricia M. McGovern, Ph.D., Division of Environmental Health Sciences, Dwenda K. Gjerdingen, M.D., Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and Pamela Jo Johnson, Ph.D., Division of Epidemiology and Community Health and Medica Research Institute. The study appears today in the online edition of Women’s Health Issues.
Teen birth rates have hit a historic low nationwide. However, when comparing the United States’ teenage birth rates to that of other countries, it becomes clear that the U.S. has a long way to go.
According to the United Nations Demographic Yearbook, 34 out of every 1000 15 to 19 year old girls gave birth in the U.S. in 2010, while in other industrialized nations, that number ranged from only 5 to 17 per 1000.
Birth and pregnancy rates are especially high among black and Hispanic youth and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, according to the 2012 National Vital Statistics Reports.
Renee Sieving, Ph.D., R.N., F.S.A.H.M., an associate professor with the Center for Adolescent Nursing in the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and adjunct associate professor in the University’s Department of Pediatrics, is investigating ways to lower U.S. teen pregnancy rates further.
Cesarean delivery is the most common surgery in the United States, performed on 1.67 million American women annually. Yet hospital cesarean rates vary widely according to new research from the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health.
A recent examination of a two-year study at the University of Minnesota is giving health care professionals an encouraging look at the future of care for girls at high risk of teen pregnancy.
The results appeared this week in JAMA Pediatrics.
Renee Sieving, R.N., Ph.D., an associate professor in the School of Nursing, and an interdisciplinary team of researchers created an intervention program called Prime Time to study the effects of immediate and immersive intervention in the lives of teenage girls identified for sexual health risk behaviors.
