Biography

As a birth center midwife in rural Appalachia for 26 years, Jill Alliman has worked to improve access to care for some of the most underserved women in the US. She serves as faculty at Frontier Nursing University in the Nurse-Midwifery education program. She was the Program Director of the AABC Strong Start project, a grant program to measure the impact of birth center care on health outcomes, collecting data in 45 birth centers with funding from CMS. Strong Start outcomes demonstrated significant improvements in health for newborns and childbearing people who participated in birth center care. Her educational background is: Nurse-Midwifery Certificate, 1986, Medical University of South Carolina; Master's in Nursing in Midwifery, 1993, Case Western Reserve; Doctorate of Nursing Practice, 2013, Frontier Nursing University. She is Past President of the American Association of Birth Centers and currently serves as Chair of the AABC Government Affairs Committee. Ms. Alliman believes that participating in birth center care can be a transformative experience for childbearing people--including the neediest--empowering them to improve their families' situations for the better. Having helped a rural birth center to survive for over 26 years, she now uses her experience to make contributions to extending the birth center model of care to a wider group of childbearing people. Her work with the American Association of Birth Centers has demonstrated that even a small group of innovative, dedicated individuals can make a significant impact on health care for women and newborns.