California Midwifery Learning Collaborative 

Organizing for equity for California's birthing people 

Integrating midwife-led care for California's Medi-Cal Enrollees


A project of the Institute for Medicaid Innovation 

(new and improved website coming soon!)

Mission of the California Midwifery Learning Collaborative

Every Medicaid beneficiary seeking reproductive health care deserves a midwife from their community. To ensure the best outcomes, midwives must be able to practice a full-scope, robust midwifery model of care; midwives deserve to be equitably compensated for this highly personalized, labor-intensive work.   


Through midwifery integration and increasing access to midwife-led care in all practice settings, we aim to improve the health of Medi-Cal beneficiaries, focusing on sexual and reproductive health care, pregnancy, postpartum, and newborn care.


We are focused on equity for people and communities most impacted by social and health disparities, especially Indigenous, Black, NHPI, Asian and Latin American heritage people, those from rural and underserved communities, and those who are economically disadvantaged.


The MLC defines "midwife-led care" as care where the midwife is truly empowered to practice the midwifery model and philosophy and not simply “utilized” in the dominant medical model of care. 


To carry out this mission & vision our team has selected 5 priority areas of focus: 

For more information or to connect:

Contact Co-Leads:

Holly Smith: holly@midwiferyrising.org 

Liz Donnelly: lizdonnelly@gmail.com


Join the MLC:

https://forms.gle/n7ocKY7WTB9FscRy6