Desert Midwives

Thank you for supporting Desert Midwives, a program of Midwives @ the Edges (M@tE). M@tE is a global network of frontline midwifery workers, organizations, and like-minded individuals who collaborate to support, teach, and encourage each other, build the evidence base and share best practices, and recruit and train up others in the art and science of midwifery.

The Desert Midwives program expands access to perinatal care in the United State's maternity care deserts by meeting the immediate need for care while training local, community-rooted people to become midwives, thus building a sustainable, culturally responsive care model for families who live in these deserts. The conventional response to a shortage of maternity care providers has been to require pregnant people to travel for care, a model that erects barriers families often cannot overcome and that drives higher maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality. Desert Midwives takes a different approach. We employ "outsider" midwives to address immediate clinical needs, but our long-term work is to build a local maternity care workforce by training midwives from within the communities themselves. Rather than asking student midwives to leave home to gain experience and education, we come to them, enabling them to develop their skills and knowledge while continuing to live among and serve the families they know. It is a simple shift, and a consequential one. Through our pilot in Mora, San Miguel, and Los Alamos counties in New Mexico, we aim to establish a model that can be replicated across New Mexico and, eventually, throughout the United States.

You can donate online using the form to the right, or checks can be mailed to: 

Midwives @ the Edges

PO Box 4573

Santa Fe, NM  87502 

Midwives @ the Edges is a 501(c)3 and all gifts are tax deductible.