2019 Speakers & Topics

Betty-Anne Daviss MA, RM has been a midwife for 45 years on various continents, and a researcher in the social sciences and clinical epidemiology for 30. She cites learning from traditional midwives from Guatemala to Afghanistan as one of the highlights of her career. While acting as the project coordinator for the Safe Motherhood Initiative of FIGO in 2004, the follow-up to the Term Breech Trial was published and she switched focus to search across Europe for best breech practice. In 2009, she persuaded Andre Lalonde of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to bring Frank Louwen, from Frankfurt to the SOGC AGM to present on upright breech and helped organize several breech conferences in Ottawa, Washington D.C., and across Europe 2009-2019. She has provided lectures in China, India, Africa; and Latin America on Human Rights in Childbirth, using the return to breech as one model solution. Working between Ottawa and Frankfurt 2008-2016, she became the co-principal investigator and principal writer for the Frankfurt study comparing vaginal breeches born with the mothers upright vs on their backs (2017) and co-authored other articles with the Frankfurt team on twins and MRIs in the breech. In 2013 she introduced a new technique to retrieve the aftercoming head in the vaginal breech to avoid forceps. Her manual “Rethinking The Physiology of Vaginal Breech Birth,” describes vaginal breech history, new manoeuvres of upright breech, and the research to support them. She is the principal editor of a recently published book, Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier: Speaking Truth to Power, a colourful combined activist/academic treatise on social justice issues (2021).

Duncan Fisher is working to help health and family services engage better with the wider family group, fathers in particular, and has recently taken this work onto the international level through The Family Initiative, www.FamilyInitiative.org.uk. The organization provides training for health professionals and is developing information services for families. In UK he co-founded the Fatherhood Institute and for three years he served on the Board of the Government’s gender equality body, the Equal Opportunities Commission. He initiated and currently manages a website for Cambridge and Princeton Universities reporting research on child welfare and development, ChildandFamilyBlog.com. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in 2008 for his “services to children”. Duncan is returning to international work after giving it up to care for his daughters at home.

Dr. Iftikher Mahmood was born in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. He graduated from Chittagong Medical College, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh in 1987. Subsequently he completed Pediatric Residency training from Brooklyn Hospital, New York and fellowship training in Pediatric Endocrinology from New York Hospital - Cornell University. Dr. Mahmood established;HOPE Foundation for Women; Children of Bangladesh, in 1999 in the USA as a charitable organization with a mission to provide healthcare to the poor and needy women and children in Bangladesh. Through HOPE Foundation he established HOPE Hospital, midwifery training program, 5 rural birth centers, 4 rural health centers in Cox's Bazar. Under his leadership, HOPE established extensive Rohingya response services with 9 primary care centers and SRH centers and a field hospital for women. Under Dr.Mahmood’s leadership HOPE Foundation is currently building first standalone 75 bed fistula and maternity center in the country. Dr Mahmood is the convener of biennial international conference on maternal health and fistula in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

Dr. Mahmood maintains full time pediatric practice in Miami since 1996; he maintains consultant position in several hospitals. He is a Fellow of American Academy of Pediatrics and Diplomat of American Board of Pediatrics.

Dr. Iftikher Mahmood lives in Cooper City, Florida with his wife and 3 children.

Janelle has worked as a midwife for 32 years and has taught nursing and midwifery students since 1999. She is an assistant professor at Frontier Nursing University, and co-chair of ACNM BirthTOOLS subcommittee and the Right Care Alliance Women’s Council. She lives off-grid in a tiny house in the mountains of northeast Washington state.

Raised with her Penobscot culture and Native American spiritual practices, Dr. Jus Crea realized the healing powers of nature at a young age. Rich with ancestral knowledge of healing, medicine, and midwifery, Dr. Jus Crea received a Doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine from the University of Bridgeport and a BS in Ethnobotany and Holistic Health from UMass, Amherst. She has also been trained as an auricular acupuncture detox specialist at Lincoln Hospital, WTS therapy for restorative healing as well as Indigenous Midwifery with Mewinzha Ondaadiziike Wiigaming. Dr. Jus Crea has lectured extensively on healing, ethnobotany, midwifery, naturopathic medicine, environmental medicine, and cultural history and traditions. She was previously an adjunct professor of Nutrition at Springfield College and Pathology at STCC as well as a primary care physician in Brattleboro VT. Dr. Jus Crea has been practicing Naturopathic Family Medicine at The Integrative Health Group in Springfield MA since 2005. She is passionate about cultural healing practices and works towards reclamation of her Wabanaki traditions, spiritual practices, and language.

Professor Lesley Page CBE PhD, MSc, BA (open), HFRCM, Honorary DSc, RM, RMT. served as President of the Royal College of Midwives from April 2012 till June 2017. Lesley has considerable international experience. She has over 300 publications. Lesley was the first professor of midwifery in the UK at Thames Valley University and Queen Charlotte’s Hospital. Throughout her career Lesley Has continued to be involved in hands on practice. She is Visiting Professor of Midwifery at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, King’s College London, Honorary Research Fellow Oxford Brookes University and Adjunct Professor University of Technology Sydney and Griffith University Australia. Lesley received the International Alumni Award University of Technology Sydney in 2013 and was conferred with an Honorary Doctor of Sc by University of West London in November 2013. In 2014 she was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to midwifery. The emphasis of her current work is the humanization of maternity care.

Dr Sally Pezaro is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Childbirth and a steering group committee member of the Mary Seacole Awards which recognise outstanding work in the black and minority ethnic (BME) communities. She is also ‘The Academic Midwife’ on Facebook, where she shares her academic life as a registered midwife online. She has experience working as a midwife clinically in the United Kingdom, the Gambia and Ethiopia. These experiences, along with further workforce research have afforded Sally new insights into the emotional labour of midwifery work. Through these insights, Sally has developed a passion for supporting the psychological wellbeing of health care professionals. Throughout her PhD work, Sally secured the case for developing an online intervention, designed to primarily support midwives in work-related psychological distress. The overriding vision for Sally’s ongoing research as an academic midwife is to secure a psychologically safe professional journey for midwives and excellence in maternity care. Her latest work focuses upon improving maternity care for women with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) in particular.

Saraswathi Vedam is Lead Investigator of the Birth Place Lab at University of British Columbia. Over 35 years, she has been a midwife, educator, and researcher. She led the provincial, community-based participatory studies, Changing Childbirth in BC and the Giving Voice to Mothers Studies, exploring access to respectful maternity care across birth settings in North America. These projects led to two new quality measures: the Mothers’ Autonomy in Decision Making (MADM) scale and the Mothers on Respect (MORi) index, that assess quality and safety as defined by the service user. She is currently PI of a 5-year CIHR funded national study of respectful maternity care across Canada. Professor Vedam has been active in setting international policy on place of birth and interprofessional collaboration. She led a multidisciplinary team to conduct the Access and Integration Maternity care Mapping (AIMM) Study; convened 3 national Home Birth Summits; and chaired the 5th International Normal Labour and Birth Research conference.

Vicki Chan is the mother of four children, and one very happy grandmother. She has been a midwife since 1983, working in hospitals, birth centre, and 25 years in homebirth practice. Presently she is working in a private hospital facilitating normal birth and has private practice rights at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital. She leads (radical) preparation for birth for parents-to-be and, with midwife Lynne Staff, is co-presenter for the Better Birth Workshops for birth-workers. She loves to write poetry, make pottery, and has published her first children’s book. Vicki helped set up the FreMo Birth Centre in the Kawangware slum of Nairobi, Kenya in 2011 where the local staff continue to set a shining example for maternity care in Kenya. She is “committed for life” to the centre and part of the ongoing financing, planning, implementation, and evaluation of midwifery practice there.