PROVIDENCE – Judith S. Mercer, a research scientist at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, was recently honored by the American College of Nurse-Midwives as the recipient of the Hattie Hemschemeyer Award, named in honor of the group’s first president and a pioneer of the profession. The award is ACNM’s most prestigious and is given annually to an ACNM member who has been certified for at least 10 years and has made continuous outstanding or historically significant contributions to midwifery, ACNM, or maternal child health.
Mercer has spent the last 40 years as a midwife – working in the name of midwifery while continuously focusing on the baby’s perspective at birth. She began her career at Booth Maternity Center in Philadelphia where she worked as a clinician and educator followed by 15 years of teaching midwifery at Georgetown University, the last 10 of these years as program director.
In addition to Georgetown, she has held academic appointments at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and is currently professor emerita at the University of Rhode Island and adjunct professor of pediatrics at The Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University.
