Understanding the CPM Credential

Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) are nationally credentialed autonomous healthcare providers with a broad scope of practice across the reproductive and perinatal lifespan. CPMs provide pregnancy, birth, postpartum, newborn, reproductive, and family planning care and are trained in continuity-based, community-centered models that emphasize physiologic birth, prevention, education, early assessment, and collaborative care. 

CPMs may contribute across a range of maternal health settings, including birth centers, postpartum and newborn visiting programs, reproductive health settings, community-based care systems, and integrated perinatal initiatives.

Massachusetts established CPM licensure in 2024 and is implementing regulation through the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Midwifery as part of broader statewide efforts to strengthen maternal health access, workforce capacity, and systems integration across the Commonwealth.

Why CPM Integration Matters

Community birth is already part of the Massachusetts maternal health landscape. Families across the Commonwealth continue to seek care options that emphasize continuity, relationship-based care, physiologic birth, and extended postpartum support.
At the same time, Massachusetts and the nation continue to face significant maternal health challenges, including:

• rising severe maternal morbidity
• workforce shortages
• gaps in postpartum support
• persistent racial inequities in outcomes
• fragmented transitions between care settings

Strengthening and integrating the midwifery workforce is increasingly recognized as one strategy for improving continuity of care, expanding access, and supporting more connected maternal health systems.
Certified Professional Midwives represent an important part of this evolving workforce landscape, particularly in areas including:

• postpartum and newborn follow-up
• continuity-centered care models
• physiologic birth expertise
• community-based support services
• workforce expansion
• interdisciplinary maternal health collaboration

Massachusetts CPM licensure creates a regulatory and systems framework intended to support more accountable, transparent, and collaborative integration across care settings.

RESOURCE HUB

For Obstetric & MFM partnrs

For pediatric partners

Transfer

For more information:

​Nicole Pegher, CPM
President, MA Chapter of the MA NACPM
[email protected]

Rebecca Herman, CPM, MPH
Director, MA DPH Community Birth & Doula Integration
[email protected]

Massachusetts Board of Registration in Midwifery 
[email protected]

Current Massachusetts Integration Efforts

Massachusetts is currently engaged in multiple statewide efforts focused on improving communication, coordination, and systems integration related to community birth care.These efforts include:

• Community Birth Transfer Drills
• interdisciplinary stakeholder collaboration
• workforce development initiatives
• regulatory implementation through the Board of Registration in Midwifery
• ongoing dialogue between hospital, public health, pediatric, EMS, and community-based providers

Massachusetts integration efforts have involved collaboration among:

• the Massachusetts Department of Public Health
• the Massachusetts chapters of ACOG
• the Massachusetts affiliate of ACNM
• hospital and systems stakeholders
• public health organizations
• birth center and community birth leaders
• Massachusetts Chapter of NACPM and NACPM national . 

The goal is not simply expansion of services, but stronger systems coordination, clearer pathways for consultation and transfer, and improved continuity for families moving across care environments.

Transfer, Consultation & Collaborative Care

Safe community birth systems depend on clear pathways for consultation, escalation, referral, and transfer when higher levels of care are needed. CPMs are trained to:

• identify deviation from normal early
• initiate stabilization measures
• activate EMS when indicated
• communicate clinically relevant information during transfer
• remain with clients through clinical handoff
• facilitate continuity following transfer

Consultation and transfer are not viewed as failures of care, but as expected components of integrated maternal health systems. Massachusetts integration efforts are increasingly focused on strengthening:

• interdisciplinary communication
• transfer coordination
• systems familiarity
• collaborative relationships across settings
• continuity during transitions of care

Collaboration is part of the safety model.

Postpartum & Newborn Continuity of Care: Dyad-Centered 

One of the most distinctive aspects of the CPM model is continuity of care for the parent-baby dyad across pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, and the newborn transition period.

In most CPM care models, the same midwife who provided prenatal care also attends the birth and continues caring for both parent and newborn throughout the postpartum period. This continuity creates a deep clinical understanding of the family’s history, physiologic patterns, social context, feeding dynamics, mental health considerations, and evolving risk factors over time.
Unlike fragmented care models, where pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, and newborn follow-up may occur across multiple clinicians and systems, CPMs often remain continuously involved throughout the full perinatal course.

The postpartum period deserves more than fragmentation and a screening questionnaire. Real postpartum care happens among dishes, laundry, interrupted sleep, feeding struggles, older siblings, and the lived reality shaping family wellbeing.

This matters clinically.

Maternal and newborn health function as a deeply interconnected physiologic and emotional unit. Maternal recovery, sleep deprivation, feeding challenges, trauma history, stress, physical recovery, and mental health directly influence newborn regulation, feeding success, bonding, weight gain, and overall infant stability.

This dyadic lens is especially important in the current maternal health landscape, where postpartum mood and anxiety disorders remain common, under-recognized, and capable of significantly impacting both parent and infant wellbeing.
CPM postpartum care occurs not only through structured assessment, but through repeated observation of families within the reality of their daily lives. Midwives are often assessing feeding, bonding, recovery, coping, exhaustion, infant behavior, family dynamics, and environmental stressors while sitting in bedrooms, on couches, in kitchens, surrounded by laundry, dishes, older siblings, interrupted sleep, and the lived reality of early parenthood.

This level of continuity and in-home observation offers a depth of context that is difficult to capture through isolated visits or screening questionnaires alone.

By caring for the parent and newborn together, CPMs are often able to:

• identify subtle concerns earlier
• recognize changes across repeated postpartum assessments
• monitor feeding and bonding over time
• support maternal mental health alongside newborn transition
• reduce gaps during the vulnerable postpartum period
• coordinate referral and escalation when indicated

​The CPM model recognizes that postpartum and newborn care are not separate clinical events, but part of a continuous and interdependent transition requiring ongoing assessment, relationship-based care, and continuity across settings.