Midwives as primary care providers

Abstract

Historically, primary health care services for women have been vastly inadequate. It was not until 1990, when the National Institutes of Health established the Office of Research on Women’s Health, that the United States began to acknowledge the importance of providing primary care services to women. Even today, women continue to be a greatly underserved population when it comes to primary health care services. Midwives are ideal providers of health promotion services for women because their entire philosophy of care centers on the promotion of women’s health throughout the lifecycle.