Description
Nuts and Bolts of Federal Legislation: Updates, Action, and TrainingThis session will help give midwives up-to-date information and effective techniques to bring about policy change at local, state and federal levels. The presentation will review and discuss legislative successes and challenges in the last year and will look at upcoming legislation of importance to ACNM members. Additionally, it will offer practical advice and workshop training on how midwives can influence health policy.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
1. Discuss legislative successes and challenges of interest to midwives in the last year.
2. Discuss current and upcoming legislative actions supported by ACNM.
3. Discuss and apply effective techniques that midwives can use to influence health policy.
4. Strategically present midwifery issues to federal legislators
Speakers
Amy Kohl is the Director of Advocacy and Government Affairs at the American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM), in this capacity Amy advocates on issues related to advancing and protecting the interests of Certified Nurse Midwives and Certified Midwives. Prior to joining ACNM, Amy lobbied for legislative issues impacting medical products distributors as the Senior Manager of Government Affairs at the Health Industry Distributors Association for over a decade. In this capacity, Amy oversaw and contributed to several recurring publications including HIDA’s State Medicaid Report, Medicare Reimbursement Analysis and Outlook Report, Licensure Standards and Gift Disclosure Report.
Amy's areas of expertise include long-term care, reimbursement and healthcare reform. Additionally, Amy’s career includes monitoring legislation for a state government relations consulting firm and working for a national political campaign committee. Amy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and Politics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Debbie Jessup, President and Founder of Sage Femme Strategies and Senior Advisor to Vectis DC, brings 40 years of experience in nursing, midwifery, women’s health, and health policy to help her clients navigate the legislative and appropriations processes and develop organizational policy strategy. She holds the distinction of being the only Midwife to have ever worked in Congress, and the longest tenured Nurse to serve as a staffer in Congress. In Deb’s early career she worked as a childbirth educator, a labor and delivery nurse, and a nurse-midwife. Her midwifery experiences included private, community health center and HMO practices, and incorporated hospital, home, and birth-center settings.
Deb established the first midwifery practice in Billings, Montana in 1982, and the first home birth practice in that state in 1984. She completed the HRSA Bureau of Health Professions Primary Care Policy Fellowship Program in 2000, and the Women’s Education and Research Institute (WREI) Congressional Fellowship Program in 2005.
For 18 years Debbie was a Health Policy Advisor in the office of former Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-40). In that position, she was actively engaged in health appropriations work, helped the Congresswoman start and Co-Chair two bipartisan caucuses (Congressional Public Health Caucus and the Congressional Caucus on Maternity Care), an managed a robust public health, nursing, and maternal health legislative agenda. Bills that she helped write and shepherd through the Congress include the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act (passed in 2007 and reauthorized in 2014), the MOMS for the 21st Century Act, the Midwives for MOMS Act, the Increasing Care and Access to Nurses (I CAN) Act, and the 113th Congress Health Equity and Accountability (HEAA) Act. Debbie holds Masters’ Degrees in Nursing, Nurse-Midwifery, and Health Education, and a PhD in Nursing and Health Policy. Her dissertation research was a comparative analysis of the Midwife and Nurse Practitioner Medicare reimbursement efforts.
This product is for those who have attended the day of events and are looking to gain ACNM CE credits.
Course expiration: May 4, 2026