Lane County Friends of the Birth Center to Meet with PeaceHealth COO

The Co-Chairs of the Lane County Friends of the Birth Center will be meeting Wednesday, May 15 with PeaceHealth COO Todd Salnas. In advance of our meeting we sent this letter of introduction.

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Mr. Todd Salnas

Chief Operating Officer

Peace Health Oregon Network

May 13, 2019

Dear Mr. Salnas,

We are the Co-Chairs of Lane County Friends of the Birth Center (LaneCoFBC), the volunteer-led consumer advisory panel for the PeaceHealth Nurse Midwifery Birth Center.  In advance of our meeting on Wednesday, May 15, we wanted to provide you with a brief introduction of our organization and some history of our Birth Center.

Founded in the 1970’s, our Birth Center is Oregon’s first – and one of the country’s oldest - nationally-accredited birth centers.  As a leader in our field, it has always demonstrated a commitment to excellence and evidence-based practice; a point of pride among the thousands of women, families, and caregivers throughout the Eugene-Springfield and greater Lane County area who are invested in the birth center model. 

Our Birth Center has existed in its current location since 2010.  In fact, this week we are celebrating the 9^th Birthday of the Birth Center’s building.  In January 2019 the 1,000^th baby was born at the Birth Center’s current location!  Births are also attended at the hospital. When you consider the number of families and individuals whose lives have been touched by the Birth Center’s suite of services over the years, the impact is staggering and spans generations!  There is a growing number of families in which the births of both mother and child were attended by Birth Center midwives.

Our Birth Center is a community Birth Center.  In fact, the construction costs for our current location were funded by the sale of the old birth center building, community donations to the Sacred Heart Medical Center Foundation totaling $774,000 (3% above the $750,000 goal), and PeaceHealth funds.  The Birth Center serves a broad cross section of our community including women and families from all socio-economic backgrounds and from as far away as Florence, Medford, and Redmond.  For women on OHP who cannot afford to pay out-of-pocket, the Birth Center is the only out-of-hospital option available.  These women are also some of the most vulnerable members of our community who most need holistic support and services.

The Birth Center’s unique range of prenatal, intrapartum, and postpartum wrap-around services include 24/7 lactation support, birth control and well-woman services.  Lactation support at the Birth Center is Baby Friendly certified as evidence-based. Here, too, the Birth Center has a proud history of leading the way in our community. The weekly baby clinics, part of the evidence-based model of care for lactation support, also provide mothers with the opportunity to connect informally with other new mothers.  In fact, many of us have formed long-lasting friendships with those we met years ago at baby clinic. Research supports these types of services and support programs as foundational for postpartum health.

We hear constantly from Birth Center clients whose lives have been forever changed by the knowledge of themselves, their bodies, and their innate strength that resulted from a labor and birth attended by Birth Center midwives and staff, as well as the holistic, wrap-around postpartum services they provide.  We also, of course, speak from our own first-hand experiences. We have both been fortunate to be able to experience childbirth, not just once but twice, under the careful and encouraging support of Birth Center midwives.   The Birth Center model of care is a valuable asset to the PeaceHealth network of caregiving institutions, and we—and countless others—want to see its role and impact in our community continue.

Finally, we also believe that the Birth Center’s woman-centered, low-tech, high-touch practices are a compassionate manifestation of PeaceHealth’s stated vision that “every person receives safe, compassionate care; every time, every touch.”

Thank you in advance for your time.  We very much look forward to meeting with you on Wednesday at 3pm.