Holly Kennedy will be a featured speaker at the September 19, 2024 meeting on Reducing Maternal Mortality: Strategies that Work. She is Professor of Midwifery (Emeritus) at Yale School of Nursing and was appointed the first Varney Professor of Midwifery in 2009. She will speak on her research comparing the healthcare systems from a number of nations with an emphasis on maternal outcomes. Her research program has endeavored to understand the value and effectiveness of specific models of care during pregnancy and birth. The Yale School of Nursing website said that she considers a concept of “optimality in which maternity care strives to achieve the maximum outcome with minimal interventions”. Dr. Kennedy served in the United States Army Nurse Corps for thirty years prior to her retirement as a Colonel. She has a nursing diploma from Miami Valley Hospital, Dayton, Ohio, She received a MS in nursing from the Medical College of Georgia and a certificate in nurse-midwifery from the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing, the forerunner of FNU. Her doctorate of nursing was awarded by the University of Rhode Island. In 2008 she was a Fulbright Scholar at Kings College, London. She is a past president of the American College of Midwives and was given their Hattie Hemschemeyer Award for her leadership in the midwifery in 2016.
