Seattle Home Maternity Service founders, Suzy Myers and Marge Mansfield, have participated in midwifery issues on the local, national and international scene for more than three decades:
Initially Marge served as “academic director” in the formative years of the SMS program, developing curriculum, faculty, and preceptor components. At the state level, she has been a board member of the Midwives' Association of Washington State (MAWS), and served on the Department of Health Midwifery Advisory Committee. As a member of a national task force, she helped develop a certification examination for midwives across the country, now providing a portion of Washington state’s licensing exam. Marge has also worked with the Midwives’ Alliance of North America in the development of a now widely-used data collection tool. She is currently a key member of the MAWS Quality Management Program committee. Interested in international issues and global health, she has participated in a variety of roles to support the legalization of midwifery in both Alberta and British Columbia, Canada and has been a presenter at several conferences of the International Confederation of Midwives.
In the early 1980’s Suzy was active in legislative reform of Washington’s Midwifery Act and served on the first Midwifery Advisory Committee, writing rules and developing the licensing examination. In 1983 she helped to launch the Midwives Association of Washington State and served as its first president from 1983-1985. In 1988 she earned a Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Washington’s Maternal and Child Health Program. She co-authored the first study of outcomes of licensed midwife-attended births in Washington, which was published in the journal Birth in 1994. More recently, she wrote a chapter for the second edition of The Labor Progress Handbook, by Penny Simkin and Ruth Ancheta.
Suzy has continued to be involved on many fronts in support of the development of professional midwifery. She served 14 years on the Board of Directors of a Joint Underwriting Association created by the Washington State legislature to provide medical malpractice insurance to midwives and birth centers, and is currently a member of a state task force of midwives and obstetricians focused on improving consultation and referral relationships. She is now actively involved in national midwifery advocacy, serving on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM) as well as chairing the new Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University, the first direct entry program in the country to grant a Masters Degree in Midwifery.