On International Day of the Midwife (IDM) the Iolanthe Midwifery Trust announced the Iolanthe Award Winners for 2022, celebrating midwives and student midwives who are leading on innovative work to improve maternity care.
This year, the Iolanthe made a mark for working towards true inclusion when it came to the award categories, applicants and winners. Awards such as the Jean Davies Award for addressing health inequalities, Dora Opoku Award for Black and Brown midwives and student midwives and the Midwifery Research Fellowship award were scooped up by midwives and student midwives working to address inequality and inequity in their workplace and provide better diversity training for colleagues.
Among the winners was the Royal College of Midwives’ (RCM) Research Advisor Jenny Cunningham. She said: “I am really proud of receiving this award as I feel it validates my PhD topic, which is about how women of a higher weight experience weight stigma in pregnancy. I will be using the award to support my attendance at the International Weight Stigma Conference this July in Berlin. I will be displaying a poster about my research and networking with others who are involved in weight stigma research.”
Among the 10 student winners was Enitan Taiwo, a student from the University of Greenwich and Lisa Rollinson, a student from De Montfort University and both members of the RCM’s Student Midwife Forum (SMF).
The award will support Enitan to expand on her podcast The Birth Booth, which aims particularly to support Black and ethnic minority women. Lisa’s award will enable the De Montfort University Midwifery Society to host the workshop Anti-racism in the birth world: Checking yourself first, for students on her degree programme.
See full list of winners here.
