Quickening Summer 2013 Vol 44, No 3 | Page 14

OUR MOMENT OF TRUTH Coming Soon: Streamlined PR Resources, New Consumer Survey N early one year after the initial launch of Our Moment of Truth™: A New Understanding of Midwifery Care, ACNM is celebrating the national successes realized, including 56 million people reached through major media outlets like PBS stations across the country, TIME Healthland, Babble.com, BlogHer, and Nurse.com. Now that we have these initial accomplishments under our belts, we’re ready to place more emphasis on growing the grassroots component of our outreach. Our Moment of Truth™: A New Understanding of Midwifery Care is ACNM’s multi-year public awareness initiative dedicated to reintroducing midwives and midwifery care to the American public. Learn more at www.ourmomentoftruth.com. • Talk with a Midwife community education materials: This section will Media Outreach for Time-Crunched Midwives We’re especially turning to ACNM affiliates as partners in effectively reaching local media outlets and communities. At the ACNM 58th Annual Meeting and & Exhibition in Nashville, affiliate leaders learned how they can help bring Our Moment of TruthTM to the grassroots level. They were asked to provide feedback as to what would be the most helpful tools in their communities. With this information in hand, ACNM is developing a streamlined toolkit designed specifically for busy volunteer leaders. The new toolkit will consist of 2 major components: introduce an all-new ACNM-designed community education program called Talk with a Midwife. Intended to facilitate continuing community engagement with Our Moment of Truth™, program materials will include a customizable PowerPoint presentation for women of childbearing age and tips for setting up presentations and Q&A sessions with various groups in your community. options during childbirth (57%), but only 29% received this information. • Although most women (65%) would like guidance and information on birth control or family planning options after a previous birth, 87% of women did not discuss this with their provider. We’re gearing up for the second annual Our Moment of Truth™ consumer survey, this year with a focus on contraception and family planning. Like the 2012 survey, the 2013 survey will be developed by an ACNM-convened survey advisory group and fielded by Lightspeed Online Research, reaching approximately 1000 demographically diverse women between the ages of 18 and 45. Our goal is to discover where women are obtaining family planning services, to what degree they are satisfied with their care, and how midwives can fill the gaps between what women are getting and what women say they want. Results of the survey will be released this fall with an accompanying national media outreach plan. To view more detailed results of the 2012 survey, visit http://bit.ly/12kGNaN. You can also learn how to get involved and help spread the word about Our Moment of Truth™ at www.ourmomentoftruth.com under Get Involved in the upper right hand corner of the site.? Listening to Consumers • Our Moment of Truth™ local launch materials: This section will include an overall guide to reaching out to reporters and generating media coverage of the campaign and midwifery. Template materials to make the process as simple and speedy as possible will include an example pitch e-mail with recommended attachments, template press release, sample phone script, and suggested social media posts. In addition to creating a new understanding of midwifery care in the United States, another major focus of the Our Moment of Truth™ initiative is to encourage women to examine their choices in health care by creating a space for open, honest conversations about birth and women’s health. In 2012, the survey focused on women’s perceptions of health care in the United States and uncovered surprising facts, including: • The large majority of women (85.4%) said they are somewhat to very satisfied with their care, yet most say they are not getting many of the services they want. • Most women who have given birth or are pregnant say their care providers aren’t talking with them about how to care for their health during pregnancy (62%) or about preparing for motherhood (80%). • Many women would like a provider who prescribes a range of pain management 14 American College of Nurse-Midwives