Saraswathi Vedam, PhD, RM, FACNM, Sci D(hc) is Lead Investigator of the Birth Place Lab at University of British Columbia and MSFHR Health Professional Investigator. For rver 35 years, her work has set standards for international policy on place of birth, midwifery integration, and measurement of high-quality perinatal services. She led the provincial, community-based participatory studies, Changing Childbirth in BC and the Giving Voice to Mothers Study and the RESPCCT Study, exploring experiences of respect, discrimination, and mistreatment during childbearing care in North America. These projects led to new quality measures: the Mothers’ Autonomy in Decision Making (MADM) scale and the Mothers on Respect (MORi) index, and the Mistreatment in Childbirth (MIST) index that assess quality and safety as defined by the service user. These award-winning instruments have been applied in research and quality improvement programs in 23 countries. Professor Vedam also convened transdisciplinary delegates at four national Birth Summits, and for a Global Perinatal Taskforce on Quality and Rights.

Tanya Khemet Taiwo, PhD, MPH, LM is an assistant professor of midwifery at Bastyr University and co-director of the Community Engagement Core at the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center. Her research focuses on prenatal environmental exposures that impact neurodevelopment and how maternal stress and racism exacerbates these exposures. Dr. Taiwo is a research fellow at The Birth Place Lab at the University of British Columbia, where she’s collaborating on the Giving Voice to Mothers Study, a research project that examines how race, ethnicity, and birthplace affect maternity care in the United States. She has decades of experience working as a licensed midwife, and co-founded a network of women’s health clinics in medically underserved areas of Sacramento, California. These clinics addressed the multi-faceted needs of low-income women and their children, in a model of respectful, preventative care that was both empowering and collaborative.