Maternal Illness Online Course(s) & Continuing Education

Alixandra Bacon is a Registered Midwife and settler living and working in Vancouver, BC on the traditional and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-waututh and Tsawwassen nations. Alixandra is President of the Canadian Association of Midwives, Past President of the Midwives Association of BC, and clinical faculty at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine. Alixandra is passionate about creating equitable access to excellent sexual, reproductive and newborn midwifery services for everyone. Alixandra is the recipient of the UBC Alumni Builder Award.

Dusty Chipura is a Master Certified and AACC accredited ADHD Coach, specializing in supporting pregnant people with ADHD. She is passionate about creating equitable access to ADHD support services, especially for people from marginalized communities, and has created the first pregnancy-specific resource for people with ADHD in conjunction with Alix Bacon, the ADHD and Pregnancy Journal. Dusty offers private and group coaching, runs various online courses, and curates a virtual ADHD support space called the ADHD Studio. You can find her salty op eds on Twitter and Tiktok, @dustychipura.

Dr. Lesley A. Tarasoff is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She is a leading scholar on the perinatal health of women with disabilities; Dr. Tarasoff is a co-author of the first known clinical practice guidelines on labour, delivery, and postpartum care for people with physical disabilities (see Berndl et al., 2021, JOGC) and of several systematic reviews and studies on the perinatal health outcomes and care experiences of women with disabilities in Canada. Primarily drawing on qualitative methodologies, her broader program of research aims to understand and address disparities and inequities in reproductive, perinatal, and mental health and health care experienced by often-stigmatized and marginalized groups, namely women with disabilities and sexual minority women. She holds a PhD in Public Health Sciences, with a Specialization in Women’s Health, from the University of Toronto. She is an advocate of midwifery care and even more so after the birth of her son in 2021.

Kim is an advanced clinical practitioner, independent nurse prescriber, registered nurse and registered midwife with additional qualifications in epilepsy, complex pregnancies, child protection, pharmacology, advanced decision making, epidemiology, diagnosis and history taking and research. She is a specialist in antiepileptic drug prescribing management & all aspects of reducing the impact of epilepsy. Since 2000, she has conducted a women with epilepsy service which provides holistic care and treatment support from teenage years to motherhood. In addition, she established and ran for 7 years a thriving community epilepsy specialist nursing service for Southampton and since 2017, a new rapidly expanding secondary care service for Winchester. Kim designed the maternity epilepsy toolkit embedded in the SUDEP (sudden unexpected death in epilepsy) Action professional checklist and focuses professionally and academically on safety and reducing the risk of avoidable adverse outcomes. She is an MBRRACE assessor and represents the Royal College of Midwives on behalf of midwives on the valproate stakeholders committee.

Dr Karen McLaughlin is a Clinical Midwife Specialist with 30 years experience and a midwifery academic and researcher currently teaching Midwifery at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her previous PhD research involved quantitative and qualitative methods and examined the management of asthma during pregnancy and the potential to translate new management methods into practice. This research has led to 11 publications to date, the development of clinical guidelines for antenatal asthma management and a globally available Asthma in pregnancy toolkit, for health practitioners, researchers and consumers.

Dr Mclaughlin has a passion for qualitative research methods and has used appreciative inquiry to examine the student midwife experience in order to build on current practices to ensure retention of student midwives and optimal experiences for student midwives and midwives. Dr McLaughlin's current research areas include examining asthma management in the postpartum period and it's association with breastfeeding and exploring perinatal mental health and models of maternity care.

Professor Claire Meek is professor of chemical pathology and diabetes in pregnancy at the University of Leicester. She runs the diabetes in pregnancy service in University Hospitals Leicester, which supports around 10,000 deliveries per year, including many in women with diabetes. Prof Meek has recently moved to Leicester and previously worked at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge (UK) and as a principal investigator at the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, University of Cambridge. She is supported by a Diabetes UK intermediate clinical fellowship and Future Leaders' Award from the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes in association with the Novo Nordisk Foundation. She has also won several national and international awards including the Young Investigator Award and Pregnancy special interest group award from the American Diabetes Association, the Young Investigator Award from the Association of Physicians (UK) and the British Medical Foundation Helen H Lawson Award.

Professor Meek runs a research team of scientists and healthcare professionals who work together to run interventional and observational clinical studies in diabetes, nutrition and obesity in pregnancy. They have recently completed a whole-diet randomised controlled trial to test a dietary intervention in gestational diabetes (DiGest trial), and the DiGest follow-up study, assessing the effect of pregnancy interventions upon maternal and offspring cardiometabolic risk postnatally. Prof Meek contributed to the CONCEPTT trial, assessing real time continuous glucose monitoring in women with type 1 diabetes in pregnancy, which led to widespread changes in clinical care internationally.

Bonnie Urquhart Gruenberg, CNM, MSN, CRNP, is the award-winning author of Birth Emergency Skills Training; Manual for Out-of-Hospital Midwives, and co-developer of the workshop by the same name. In 2023, her long-awaited seminal work, Birth Emergencies for Community Midwives, will come to press. She has caught more than 2,100 babies to date in the home, in a free-standing birth center, and in the hospital. She currently works for Wellspan Health in Lancaster County, PA. Bonnie has written and illustrated 12 books on topics ranging from midwifery and maternity care to wild horse management. She enjoys painting, photography, and hobby farming.

Monika Patel, Doctor of Physical Therapy and Strength and Conditioning Specialist has a passion for empowering women to prepare mentally and physically for a well-balanced parenthood. She is currently undergoing the American Physical Therapy Association's Certificate in Obsetrics. She has applied her knowledge toward preventative medicine and established Train4Birth, an affordable online education and beneficial movement course with a built-in accountability feature. She is also the mother of a truck-loving toddler and couldn’t be happier than digging with him in the backyard.

Autumn Fuselier holds a bachelor's degree in nursing from The University of Tennessee. She also holds a master's degree in nursing with a specialty in nurse-midwifery and a doctorate of nursing practice with Frontier Nursing University. She is board-certified by the American Midwifery Certification Board and is a professional member of the American College of Nurse-Midwives and a legislative advocate through the National Government Affairs Committee (NGAC). Autumn has experience working with adult and obstetric critical care populations, as well as in antepartum, intrapartum, postpartum, and newborn care. She is also faculty for midwifery and women's health NP students at Frontier Nursing University.

A wife and mom of four herself, Autumn personally knows the challenges and joys of pregnancy and motherhood. She has a passion for improving maternal and neonatal health and strongly believes in the power of midwifery and shared-decision making to improve outcomes and empower birthing people and their families.

In 2021 Dr Pezaro won the 'Partnership Working' award from the Royal college of midwives and a 'Midwives Award' from the Iolanthe Midwifery Trust. In 2019, Dr Pezaro was honoured with a first prize award from the Royal Society of Medicine in 'Leading and inspiring excellence in maternity care' and was also first runner-up for the British Journal of Midwifery's 'Midwife of the Year' 2019. - @SallyPezaro

Katrina B. Mitchell, MD, IBCLC, PMH-C is a breast surgeon, lactation consultant, and perinatal mental health provider. Her surgical practice includes the care of women with breast cancer and benign breast disease. She sees runs a daily breastfeeding medicine practice, treating patients for a wide variety of lactation concerns ranging from hypolactation to nipple trauma. Additionally, she provides medication management and support for women impacted by perinatal mood and anxiety conditions.

Dr. Mitchell lectures locally, nationally, and internationally on the intersection of lactation and surgery, and has authored book chapters, clinical care protocols, and journal articles on the topic. She is the creator of the physicianguidetobreastfeeding.org, an evidence-based resource for breastfeeding families and the communities that support them. Dr. Mitchell resides in Santa Barbara, California and practices at the Ridley Tree Cancer Center at Sansum Clinic. She enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time with her son camping at the beach. She can be reached at physicianguidetobreastfeeding.org.