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Annual Members Meeting with guest speaker Melissa Cheyney, PhD, LDM

When
09/30/2025
11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
Location
Zoom

Registration

CALM Member Registration
All members qualify for free registration and California LMs will receive the designated number of CEUs.

You will need to sign in to the membership portal in order to verify your membership. Sign in with the email address associated with your CALM membership.

If you have any difficulties, email us as info@calmidwives.org.

Registration is closed

Earn continuing education credits (CEUs) while deepening your understanding of how data shapes the future of midwifery in California. Our keynote speaker, Melissa Cheyney, LDM, PhD, will present findings from her review of the California LMAR and share recommendations for strengthening community birth data collection. We’ll also hear from special guests:

Kairis Joy Chiaji (CAM Board), on the Bridget "Biddy" Mason Black Midwifery Scholarship and Financial Aid Fund
Lauren Hall (CAM Fundraising Consultant), who will provide tools and tips to help you champion midwifery in California

Accurate, consistent data collection is one of the most powerful tools we have to strengthen midwifery care—and this course will show you how. Guided by Melissa Cheyney, LDM, PhD, we’ll explore the history and purpose of the Licensed Midwife Annual Report (LMAR), best practices for perinatal data collection across birth settings, and hear the latest updates from the Perinatal and Community Birth Data Registries. Participants will also learn about common challenges in data definitions and alignment, plus opportunities for future research and collaboration.

In addition, CAM will share brief updates on licensed midwife education and student scholarships.

Why Attend?
As a licensed midwife, the way you document and report your work directly impacts how our profession is understood, evaluated, and advanced. Standardized data is essential for quality improvement, quality assurance, and benchmarking—without it, midwifery outcomes risk being misinterpreted or excluded from healthcare research and policy. This course equips you with both the knowledge and advocacy tools to ensure midwifery is represented with accuracy, integrity, and a strong collective voice.

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(1.0) CAM CEUs are available to CALM licensed midwife members as a benefit of their membership. The meeting and presentation are free to all CALM members.

You'll need to log-in to both verify your current membership and to register.

About Dr. Cheyney

Melissa (Missy) Cheyney PhD, LDM is Professor of Clinical Medical Anthropology at Oregon State University (OSU) and a Licensed Midwife. She is Co-Director of Uplift—a research and reproductive equity laboratory at OSU, where she serves as the Primary Investigator on more than 20 maternal and infant health-related research projects, including the Community Doula Project. She is the author of an ethnography entitled Born at Home (2010, Wadsworth Press) and co-editor of Birth in Eight Cultures (2019, Waveland Press). She has published extensively on the cultural beliefs and clinical outcomes associated with midwife-attended births in the United States and globally. Dr. Cheyney is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care and the chair of the Human Research Protection Program’s Institutional Review Board at OSU.

In 2019, Dr. Cheyney served on the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Birth Settings in America Study and in 2020 was named Eminent Professor by OSUs Honors College. She also received Oregon State University’s prestigious Scholarship Impact Award for her work in the International Reproductive Health Laboratory and with the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) Statistics Project.