NACPM’s Vision, Purpose, Commitments and Values

Vision

NACPM envisions a primary birth care system in our country where all birthing people access care through a midwife, where birth place is the choice of the family, and where all childbearing people and their babies have the same chance to be healthy.

Purpose

NACPM’s purpose is to be a powerful, collective voice for Certified Professional Midwives. We strengthen and support excellence in the profession and influence birth health policy to ensure that all childbearing people and babies have a healthy start.

NACPM Is Committed To:

  • Safeguarding the right to normal physiologic birth for every childbearing person

  • Ensuring that midwives are the primary birth care providers in the United States

  • Establishing licensure and equitable reimbursement for CPMs in all 50 states, territories and the District of Columbia

  • Advocating for CPMs to the public, state and federal legislators and health policy makers

  • Securing a place in the birth care system for the unique and valuable services of CPMs

  • Investing in a strong, racially, ethnically and socially representative CPM workforce to meet the needs of childbearing people

  • Supporting excellence and innovation in midwifery education

  • Informing best practice and providing clinical guidance relevant to our unique model of care

  • Unifying and strengthening midwifery through partnerships with midwives and consumers

  • Influencing state and national policy to improve birth outcomes in all settings throughout the United States

  • Eliminating unconscionable disparities in birth outcomes for people of color, indigenous people, and their infants

  • Dismantling systemic racism in midwifery and the birth care system

  • Ensuring safe, high-quality, respectful care for all women and childbearing people that improves outcomes, avoids unnecessary medical interventions and locates power over the birth experience with the woman or person giving birth

  • Opposing the oppression of childbearing women, including the impacts of sexism, misogyny, and gender-based and obstetrical violence.

  • Opposing the oppression of LGBTQIA2S+ childbearing people, including homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, and violence based on sexuality, gender expression, and family structure

  • Utilizing NACPM’s colonial privilege as an organization to influence policy that recognizes the inherent sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous peoples

  • Understanding and addressing the compound negative impact of oppression on childbearing people with multiple intersecting identities 

Values

Transparency
We are open with our stakeholders about our work, challenges, successes, motivations and intentions.  We welcome questions and dialogue about anything that will help us work together to make the changes we want to see happen.

Courageous Integrity
We do what we say we will do, even when it is difficult or challenging.  We do not shy away from tough conversations or bold plans.  We bring our heart and our perspective for the good of the whole system to bear on the work we do and the way we do it.

High-Performance Teamwork
We challenge ourselves and each other to bring out the best we have to give for our shared cause.  We strive for ever-higher levels of performance and know the stronger our team, the more effectively we can achieve our goals.

Respect
We acknowledge individual preferences and differences.  Our intention is that our respect is always felt by our members, colleagues, partners and stakeholders.

Collaboration
We need each other to bring about the change we know is possible.  We work hard to be good partners and foster game-changing collaboration.

Innovation
We aim to tap the source of what is possible for birth care in the US.  We create conversations and projects that allow new insight and action to flow, in order to help us achieve our goals.  We do not discard what is already working, nor are we limited by what has worked in the past.

Resourcefulness
We pride ourselves on making the most with what we have. Our intention is that nothing goes to waste.   We bring creativity and strategy to ensure that we maximize the potential of our resources.

Equity
We know equitable healthcare is possible.  We work on ourselves and the systems we impact to remove personal and institutional racism and discrimination.  We know we are not perfect, and we are committed to learning, action and vision to create an equitable future.