Regarding the Washington State Home Birth Study

Background: Last year there a great deal of discussion about an ACOG-publicized study on "planned" home birth by Pang et al, based on WA state birth certificate data, which seemed to show that planned home births were more dangerous for the baby than hospital births. Newspapers around the country picked up the story. The study was first presented as a poster session at an ACOG conference last May, but not published until August, so it was not until August that anyone could really look at the methods used and critically review the study.

What's New: Now several letters to the editor of Obstetrics and Gynecology criticizing the methodology of the study have just been published, and a number of organizations have prepared a press packet. The included press release draws attention to the problems with the study that undermine the validity of the results.

What You Can Do to Get This to the Press: Since birth activists don't have the resources to hire professional media outreach people, we are going to do this ourselves. The national groups are seeing to it that the press packet gets to some of the national news media. Getting it to the attention of state and local news media will be up to local groups and individuals, which is why this press packet is now available to you with instructions for how to use it effectively!

Never done anything like this before? There are easy instructions or "tips" outlining step-by-simple-step what to do to use this press packet effectively (see below). Even if you can only get this press packet to one reporter in one local newspaper or on a local radio station, that is terrific!

If you can coordinate your efforts with your state midwifery or midwifery advocacy ("friends of midwives" or similar) organization, all the better.

Included in the press packet below is the Press Release, two Citizens for Midwifery Fact Sheets about the study, and a bibliography of home birth studies:

www.mana.org/WAHomeBirthStudy.pdf

www.cfmidwifery.org/pdf/WAHomeBirthStudy.pdf

And, if you would like to learn more about presenting this information to the press, read this pdf file which contains Tips for Contacting the Print Media and Tips for Contacting Radio Talk Shows:

www.mana.org/WAHomeBirthStudyTips.pdf

You will need the latest version of Acrobat Reader to view the file; click here to download.

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