Aligned: National and State Goals
forging toward an inclusive future, honoring the wisdom and courage of our ancestors

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 

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​The Art & Legacy
​of Midwifery

C​PMs honor the legacy of our ancestors and the generations of midwives who have guided birthing people through their childbearing years throughout human history.

Many CPMs draw on their community birth worker traditions and incorporate ceremony, prayer, and complementary healing into the care they offer.

​We aspire to revive traditional midwifery in
every community, integrating evidence-based practices to maximize safety and wellbeing for the entire family
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