The CenteringPregnancy Model

Sharon Schindler Rising, MSN, CNM, FACNM, is a certified nurse-midwife who graduated from the Yale School of Nursing, taught on the faculty there, and then established the graduate nurse-midwifery program and the Childbearing Childrearing Center at the University of Minnesota. From 1993 to 1994, she developed and piloted the CenteringPregnancy-model of group health care in Waterbury, Connecticut and began doing instructional workshops nationally and internationally. She is the founder and president emeritus of the Centering Healthcare Institute, Inc. (CHI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health by transforming care through Centering groups. She has been on the clinical nursing faculty at the Yale School of Nursing and is an adjunct professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. In 2006, she was named a distinguished alumna by Yale University School of Nursing, and in 2007 she was presented with the National/International Award for Outstanding Contribution to Maternal & Child Health by the National Perinatal Association. She was awarded the Purpose Prize by Civic Ventures in December 2008, and in 2010 she won the Trout Premier Cares Award, was named an Edge Runner by the American Academy of Nursing, and received the Hattie Hemschemeyer Award from the American College of Nurse-Midwives. Charlotte Houde Quimby, MSN, CNM, FACNM, graduated from the Yale School of Nursing, taught on the faculty, and served as chair of the department of Maternal Newborn Nursing and chief nurse-midwife at Yale New Haven Hospital. In 1997, she received the Distinguished Alumna Award for Yale University School of Nursing. She developed the nurse-midwifery service at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and was a faculty member at Dartmouth Medical School, where she continues as an adjunct faculty of Community and Family Medicine. She has worked in nursing and midwifery programs internationally for the American College of Nurse-Midwives Global Division, providing training needs assessments, training, and project evaluation in Africa and Asia. She was a Visiting Senior Associate in 1993/1994 at Emory University's Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing. She served in the New Hampshire Legislature and received the New Hampshire Nurses Association Legislator's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Nursing Legislation. She was a consultant/faculty member for the Centering Healthcare Institute, Inc. (CHI) from 2004 to 2014.