Campaign for Midwifery - CAM - Tax-Deductible
In 2024 Californians for the Advancement of Midwifery (CAM) continues the California Campaign for Midwifery, which will fund a variety of initiatives to grow the midwifery profession and expand access to midwifery care in the state of California.
Making midwifery education more accessible to the people of California is a critical component to growing the profession and its reach. Community-based midwifery training in the US is expensive, time consuming, and underfunded. Typical expenses include not just tuition, but time lost to the unpaid clinical internships required to graduate and qualify for national board exams.
In addition, the inability to earn income from a regular job while on-call for a midwifery practice during clinical training is a hardship for many students. Because of systemic racism and the additional stressors of living with racism, these obstacles are even greater for Black, Brown, and Indigenous midwifery students.
Adding to these challenges is the fact that the only programs available in California for licensed midwives are small private vocational programs, started by grassroots efforts in the 1990s. Student midwives must rely on their own resources to either gain clinical experience with qualified midwives in their community or travel to other states or overseas for clinical education.
Further, because there are no public-school programs in California, or public research dollars invested in demonstrating the value, efficiency, and efficacy of midwifery care in producing stellar outcomes and high levels of satisfaction in care, students are left paying anywhere from $20,000 to over $100,000 in tuition, plus living expenses, in order to graduate from private programs that take 3 to 5 years to complete.
To meet the Campaign’s goals to grow the midwifery profession and increase access to midwifery in California, CAM has partnered with various stakeholders including California Healthcare Foundation. Funding this year will support a further outreach to California community colleges to implement licensed midwife programs; expansion of Medi-Cal access to community-based midwifery care in birth centers and homes; and equity initiatives that include sponsoring professional memberships to the California Association of Licensed Midwives for midwives of color and funding the Black Student Midwife Scholarship Fund.
Thank you for supporting our mission to increase access to midwifery care in California!
If you prefer to write a check, please send it to:
Californians for the Advancement of Midwifery
c/o Rosanna Davis
P.O. Box 104
San Leandro, CA 94577
EIN: 77-0131956
CAM is a California 501c3 non-profit charity and therefore your donation is tax-deductible.