Return to Member Resources > ACNM Affiliate Resource Center > Affiliate Officer Resources

   Printer Version    Email This Page

Policy and Advocacy

State Health Insurance Exchanges

ACNM urges members to become involved in the establishment of their state health insurance exchanges.  Millions of Americans will begin purchasing coverage through these exchanges under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).  States need our leadership in order to address reimbursement issues critical to midwifery practice and women’s health care.  Team up with advanced practice nurses and other health care leaders in your state to ensure that women have access to the full scope of midwifery services.  Follow this link for talking points from ANA’s organizational comments: http://www.nursingworld.org/cms102411.  For more information on what’s happening in your state, go to: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/8213.cfm.
 

Help Implement the Future of Nursing Recommendations 

Sign up now for weekly emails from Center to Champion Nursing in America.  These emails are chock full of resources, including state updates, funding opportunities, conference, symposium and fellowship information, and communications updates such as news, tools, and resources.  To sign up, please contact Andrew Bianco (abianco@aarp.org) with your name, title, organization, email address and action coalition affiliation (if applicable).

Position Statements

Statements encompassing all positions officially held by the American College of Nurse-Midwives can be found herePosition Statements. The ACNM Board of Directors has recently made it easier for affiliate leaders to expand on ACNM national position statements and comment on affiliate-specific legislation and regulation.

If your affiliate would like to comment on, say more than, or disagree with an official ACNM position, follow the links below. 

• ACNM Affiliate Agreement supplementary provision on affiliate communications (final version, updated July 2011)

• Affiliate Policy Waiver Request process (final version, updated July 2011)

State Resource Center

The State Resource CenterState Resource Center contains documents regarding laws and regulations affecting midwifery practice in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, fact sheets with demographic information about CMs and CNMs, and updates on legislative developments. Please note that you must be logged in to access some of this information.

Resources

These ACNM presentations provide an overview of key concepts related to affiliate governance and may be modified and used by state leaders:

• Nonprofit Board ResponsibilitiesBoard Responsibilities Powerpoint

• Affiliate Governance

Statehealthfacts.orgState Health Facts is a project of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and is designed to provide free, up-to-date, and easy-to-use health data for all 50 states. Statehealthfacts.org provides individual state fact sheets and state comparisons on more than 700 health topics and is linked to both the Kaiser Family FoundationKaiser Family Foundation website and Kaiser Health NewsKaiser Health News.  Topics include cesarean delivery, preterm birth rate,  infant mortality, Medicaid utilization, reproductive health, and more.

Four great resources for state advocacy to improve maternity care:

• See the latest state-by-state statistics on midwife-attended births (and trends from 1989-2007) published in JMWH

• 2008 key state maternity care statistics from Childbirth Connection

• Hospital- and provider-level statistics for the 19 states where these are available

• Maternal/perinatal quality collaboratives listed by state (from Childbirth Connection)