Kitty Ernst, one of the Founding Mothers of the birth center movement in the United States recently visited Madison Birth Center. One of our birth rooms is named after Kitty, who started out as a young midwife working with Mary Breckinridge at the Frontier Nursing Service. (Our other birth room is named after Mary Breckinridge.) Kitty is a wonderful person - both an inspiration and a friend - and it was a true pleasure to have this midwifery and birth center pioneer visit with us.
For more than 40 years, Kitty Ernst has been a pioneer in the field of midwifery. As an early president and active member of the American College of Nurse-Midwives, she led efforts in public education and accreditation for the profession. As a practitioner, her experience ranges from the mountains of Kentucky to the streets of New York City. In 1983, she founded the National Association of Childbearing Centers and served as its director from 1983-93.
Since 1989, Kitty has been on the faculty of the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing, which is based at Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. She has been the driving force behind the Community-Based Nurse-Midwifery Education Program (CNEP) at the Frontier School, a distance-learning program for graduate nurse-midwives. Since 1991, Kitty has held the Mary Breckinridge Chair of Midwifery at the Frontier School, which is the country's only endowed chair in nurse-midwifery.
She holds a certificate in nurse-midwifery from the Frontier Graduate School of Nursing in Kentucky, a baccalaureate degree from Hunter College, and a master's degree in public health from Columbia University.
Kitty Ernst, one of the Founding Mothers of the birth center movement in the United States recently visited Madison Birth Center. One of our birth rooms is named after Kitty, who started out as a young midwife working with Mary Breckinridge at the Frontier Nursing Service. (Our other birth room is named after Mary Breckinridge.) Kitty is a wonderful person - both an inspiration and a friend - and it was a true pleasure to have this midwifery and birth center pioneer visit with us.
