Purpose of the Symposium
1) Discuss the benefits of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI) for hospitals, clinics, mothers, infants, and clinicians
2) Provide a forum for discussion among nurses, doctors, doulas, childbirth educators, midwives, administrators and others on the challenges and opportunities of implementing mother-friendly care in the clinical or hospital setting.
3) Provide a forum for dissemination of evidence-based best practices for maternity care.
4) Support clinics, hospitals and community-based programs in developing plans of action to shift the thinking in their organizations towards mother-friendly care and develop multidisciplinary coordinated networks of maternity care providers.
5) Practitioners and students of maternity care will obtain an objective understanding of the collision of worldviews and belief systems when the medical and midwifery models of maternity care intersect.
6) Participants will describe how the perinatal community as a whole can best collaborate to provide optimal care for mothers and infants based on the principals of the MFCI and the evidence-based practices available as outlined in the 10 steps of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI).
Principles of the MFCI are:MFCI Step this session refers to:
Principles
Steps
Step 2. Provides accurate descriptive and statistical information to the public about its practices and procedures for birth care, including measures of interventions and outcomes.
Step 5. Has clearly defined policies and procedures for:
.
For a description of MFCI principles and steps, go to: http://wholisticmaternalnewbornhealth.org/cims-mfci-principles-steps/
Conference Themes this session refers to are:
For a description of conference themes, go to: http://2015mfcisymposiumprotectingthemo.sched.org/
Joy is the founder of The 2020 Mom Project ("The Project") an urgent national call to action that sets forth an aggressive new path for solving what some have called one of the biggest public health concerns of our time: the silent maternal mental health crisis which impacts up to 20% of expecting and new moms.
The project seeks to bring about change by the year 2020, starting with the insured population.
Because of a complicated set of long-standing barriers, expecting and new moms are not consistently screened for emotional problems and therefore are not diagnosed and offered treatment, and consequently these moms and families largely suffer in silence
Research suggests that when moderate to severe cases of maternal mental health disorders are left untreated, not only does the mother's health suffer, but so does her infants', the stability of her marriage or partner relationship, and the long-term health and well being of all of her children.
