Bethany Golden

The inaugural recipient of the Allison Adams Wieczorek Scholarship for Maternal-Infant and Pediatric Nursing, is Bethany Golden, a registered nurse and a certified-nurse midwife who has practiced sexual and reproductive health for twenty years. Currently Bethany is pursuing her PhD degree at the University of California San Francisco with a focus on midwifery and telehealth.

As a clinician, novice researcher, and lecturer, she has worked in clinics, hospitals, universities, and villages in New York City, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Fiji, and Nicaragua. While pursuing her PhD, Bethany has co-developed three reproductive health bills in California, collaborating closely with reproductive justice advocates, assembly members, and their staff. Collectively, these new policies offer millions of dollars for comprehensive sexual and reproductive training funds and scholarships for nurses and other essential healthcare staff such as midwives, doulas, EMTs, community health workers, and physicians to ensure malpractice insurance for those who provide abortion and gender affirming therapy; and increase legal protections within the state for California for providers who provide abortion elsewhere or via telehealth.

She has published a total of four peer-reviewed articles since commencing her PhD program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), both collectively as part of a research team and solo. On many occasions, Bethany has been an invited panelist and moderator for local and national organizations. She has been interviewed for radio shows, podcasts and newspapers, including the New York Times, for her clinical expertise in midwifery and for her reproductive health policy work. In 2002, she co-founded and continues to operate ICAS/Juntos Adelante, a not-for-profit that focuses on health and human rights in Nicaragua. She was awarded the Martin Luther King award by the Yale School of Nursing, where she received her masters in nursing.

The Allison Adams Wieczorek Maternal-Infant and Pediatric Scholarship will allow Bethany to conduct primary research to deepen our understanding how certified nurse-midwives’ experience telehealth in clinical practice and how it impacts patient-provider interactions and their full scope of reproductive services. Her ultimate goal for her research program is to understand how to best apply telehealth while maintaining midwifery’s proven care models and positive health outcomes to reduce maternal mortality and reproductive health disparities. Upon graduation, Bethany plans to conduct research and continue to lead policy change as nursing faculty.