In particular, the generous support of our sponsors and exhibitors.

The2008 Breathing New Life into Maternity Care conference program with sponsors and exhibitor information can be downloaded here.

Eugene Declercq, is the Professor and Assistant Dean for Doctoral Education in the School of Public Health at Boston University where he directs a collaborative effort which led to the Doctorate of Public Health Program and BUSPH. He also serves as co-chair of the Steering Committee for the DrPH Subcommittee of the Association of Schools of Public Health. Gene Declercq combines formal training in political science with almost twenty years of experience as a certified childbirth educator to examine policy and practice related to childbirth in the US and abroad. The most recent example is his current research examining cesarean section in the US as part of his work as a Robert Wood Johnson-funded Health Policy Investigator. He has served as lead author of two national studies of women's experiences in childbirth entitled Listening to Mothers. He has published numerous research articles and is currently working on a book on cesarean childbirth. He was a technical advisor to the film documentary, The Business of Being Born. He's also been active in a variety of public health projects in a number of Massachusetts communities. As an educator, he is a past president of the Association of Teachers of Maternal and Child Health and has been a recipient of the Norman Scotch Award for outstanding teaching at BUSPH.

Soo Downe , is the Professor of Midwifery Studies at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, where she leads the Research in Childbirth and Health (ReaCH) Group. She chairs the UK Royal College of Midwives Campaign for Normal Birth steering committee, and recently chaired the joint Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists/National Patient Safety Agency subcommittee on evidence for care bundle development in maternity care. She is the co-chair of the International Confederation of Midwives Research Standing Committee. She is a member of the UK Medical Research Council College of Experts, and has held a number of visiting professorships, most recently in Belgium, Hong Kong, and Sweden. Her main research focus currently is the nature of interprofessional culture around childbirth. Her most recent programme of work has included a study to create a tool to measure and build collaboration between maternity care practitioners (specifically midwives and obstetricians), with an emphasis on creating authentic collaboration and dealing constructively with potential adverse incidents. This programme is designed to establish the optimum tools for assessing organisational culture/climate, attitudes to mode of birth, and factors influencing behaviour in the maternity services context. She has now been funded to develop this work in two more sites, with a view to rolling it out in a larger study in future. Soo is the editor of Normal Birth, Evidence and Debate (2004, 2008). She has published over 40 peer reviewed papers and 15 book chapters since 2004 and set up, and now coordinates, the biannual international normal birth research conference series, which has recently run for the fourth time.

Paul Reuwer, is a consultantant gynaecologist, obstetrician and perinatologist and Director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Tilburg, The Netherlands. He is also the current Director of training in Advanced Midwifery at St. Elizabeths Hospital and the Brabant Medical School in Tilburg. He has also served on the Dutch Counsel for training in obstetrics and gynaecology. Dr Reuwer is a strong advocate of increasing the skills of professionals involved in maternity services and of improving the support networks available to midwives and birthing mothers. He is a co-author of the book Proactive Support of Labour: the challenge of normal childbirth which explores the increase of medical intervention in birth and addresses the questionable benefits of this trend. His published research articles and book chapters range from Doppler sonography, placental failure, the causal diagnoses of labour disorders, and the management of labour amongst others. He is actively involved in the organisation and presentation of interactive ongoing education for Dutch and Belgian obstetricians, midwives and labour ward nurses on the principles and practice of proactive support during labour. These courses are designed to enhance the professional labour and delivery skills by providing the expertise and step-by-step guidance for preventing prolonged labor.

Debbie Slater , is a member of Childbirth Australia and currently one of two consumer representatives on the Maternity Services Advisory Group. She is also a consumer representative on the NHMRC Project Reference Groupf for the National Guidance for Collaborative Maternity Care. She is Chair of Community Midwivery WA, Chair of the Community Advisory Council (CAC) of King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, and a memeber of the CAC for the Perth North Metropolitan Regional Health Authority. Sis a Consumer Review for Midwifery Practice Review and childbirth educator with a Diploma in Antenatal Edcuation from the University of Luton. Her day job as a patent attorney tends to take second place to her passion for working for improvements in maternity services. She has given birth to three beautiful boys: two are now gorgeous teenage young men; her 'baby Michael' died very shorthly after birth nearly 17 years ago.

Vicki Van Wagner, Vicki Van Wagner, is Associate Professor of the Midwifery Education Program at Ryerson University on Toronto, Canada. She is a registered midwife in Ontario and Quebec and practices in both Toronto and in Nunavik (Quebec). She was the first director of the Ryerson Midwifery Education Programme from 1993-1998 and is currently an Associate Professor at the Ryerson MEP. Vicki was part of the team that advocated for and developed midwifery regulation and education in Ontario as part of the AOM and CMO and has been practicing midwifery since 1980 in Toronto. She was co-chair of the 2004 – 2005 Ontario Maternity Care Expert Panel and currently sits on the Provincial Maternal and Newborn Advisory Committee to advise the Ministry of Health on maternity care policy. Vicki is currently working on her PhD, exploring the application of evidence-based practice in maternity care. Other research interests: northern and remote midwifery, the debate about CS by choice, “normal” childbirth, clinical education. Vicki is recognized nationally as a leader in midwifery and midwifery education..is Midwifery Advisor at the Department of Health in England. She is a visiting Professor in Midwifery & Women's Health at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King's College London. She is a Governor of Middlesex University & has received awards from the Royal Institute of Public Administration for Managerial Innovation & from Oxford University for her work in relation to Equity of Care for Socially Excluded Women. She co-chaired the working group that published National Standards for Maternity Services and has a particular interest in the quality & regulation of maternity services.

Stephanie Bell, a Kulilla/Wakka Wakka woman, is Director of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, one of the country’s largest and longest established Aboriginal Medical Services.

Ms Bell is a former Chair of the Aboriginal Medical Service Alliance of the Northern Territory, Chair of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Health Forum and an executive member of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation. She also is a board member of the Central Australian Division of General Practice and the General Practice Division of the Northern Territory. Ms Bell convenes the Community Forum within the CRC for Aboriginal Health.

Mina and Harry Tugulak, reside in Purvurnituq, Quebec and were instrumental in the establishment of the Inuulitsivik Health Centre. Mina is an Inuit midwife and Harry is community leader. For the past 20 years, a quiet revolution in maternity care has been taking place in seven remote Inuit communities nestled along the east coast of Hudson Bay in Northern Quebec. A team of Inuit midwives, along with nurses and physicians, run the successful Inuulitsivik Health Centre, which serves these remote villages in Nunavik, Quebec, with a population of 5,500 and birth rates twice the Canadian average. The service is seen as a model of community-based education of Aboriginal midwives, integrating both traditional and modern approaches to care and education. Developed in response to criticisms of the policy of evacuating women from the region in order to give birth in hospitals in southern Canada, the midwifery service is integrally linked to community development, cultural revival, and healing from the impacts of colonization.