The recipient of this award has proven efforts in educating health professionals and/or expectant families about stillbirth prevention or care. Their work will reflect recent evidence and be aimed at improving outcomes for families.
The Nominees Are…….
For Claire Foord stillbirth is a devastation that no family should endure but sadly, yet it is a turmoil that will live with Claire forever. In 2014, she and her husband welcomed a baby girl and on the same day, they had to say goodbye – Alfie was stillborn at term – a perfect baby, with no illness or issue, but without breath. This devastating tragedy saw Claire campaign and establish Still Aware. A passionate advocate, Claire hopes to bring about change and a high level of awareness that stillbirth deserves. Claire’s efforts have been recognized when she was awarded South Australia’s Local Hero aware, in the 2016 Australian of the Year Awards. As an awarded South Australian visual artist, Claire’s work is exhibited and collected locally and internationally, including galleries and institutions in the US, Canada and Germany. Prior to this, Claire completed a Bachelor in Visual Arts and a Diploma in Education
Dr. Denise Cote-Arsenault has a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing and a Master’s in Childbearing Family Nursing / Nurse Education degrees from Syracuse University, a PhD in Nursing from University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Women’s Health Research at the University of Washington, Seattle. She has clinical background in childbearing family nursing with years of experience in childbirth education, labor, delivery, postpartum and neonatal areas, and perinatal loss. She is currently an Eloise R. Lewis Excellence Professor of Nursing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, in southeastern US. In addition to her research she teaches nursing students at all levels in the areas of research, evidence-based practice, pregnancy and theory. Dr. Côté-Arsenault’s research over the past 25 years has focused on women’s experiences of pregnancy after prior perinatal loss, couple’s experiences of continuing pregnancy with a life-limiting fetal diagnosis and perinatal palliative care. She has nearly 50 published articles, and with her research colleague, Dr. Erin Denney-Koelsch, has just completed edited their new text “Perinatal Palliative Care: A Clinical Guide” that will be available in the coming months. Recently awarded a Fulbright Scholar Award, she will be spending 3 months in 2020 at Edinburgh Napier University conducting an ethnographic study of Bereavement Care in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dr. Deb Rich, PhD, LP, CPLC is the Founder and Director of Shoshana Center for Reproductive Health Psychology, PLLC in St. Paul, MN Deb has provided psychotherapy, training and consultation for over 30 years. Shoshana Center honors the memory of her daughter Shoshana, who was stillborn in August of 1985. Shoshana Center has gained local, national and international recognition, and is the only licensee of Dr. Rich’s training curricula, Momma CareTM. Deb holds leadership positions with the North American Society for Psychosocial OB/GYN, Pregnancy Loss and Infant Death Alliance, Minnesota Women in Psychology and the national faculty of Resolve Through Sharing.
Dr. Jane Warland is a registered midwife and Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of South Australia. She has been involved in clinician education since suffering the unexplained full-term stillbirth of her daughter Emma in 1993. Jane currently teaches undergraduate midwifery students about stillbirth prevention and management. She has produced texts and other resources to enhance clinician education about stillbirth for example, her book “Midwife and the bereaved family” has been widely used in undergraduate education since it was published in 2000. Jane has recently updated key parts of that book into a chapter in the text book “Midwifery” published by Wiley in 2018. Over the past 26 years she has worked with organisations such as SIDS and Kids (Red Nose), Sands, Still Aware and Star Legacy to deliver clinician education workshops and seminars about stillbirth risk, management and prevention. She, and the founder of Still Aware (Claire Foord), developed the InUTERO workshop which is a half day workshop specifically designed to education clinicians about risk factors for stillbirth as well as helpful strategies talk to pregnant women about keeping safe in pregnancy. They have successfully trialed the workshop in Australia and it will be run for the first time in the USA at the summit.
