Nadene S. Brunk

Midwives for Haiti

Nadene S. Brunk, M.S.N., C.N.M. is a board-certified nurse midwife with Virginia Women’s Center’s office in Hanover. She is a specialist in the field of women’s health. She was prepared through a formal course of academic and clinical study to care for women throughout the life spectrum, providing reproductive, obstetric and gynecologic health care.

Nadene completed a bachelor’s degree in nursing at Eastern Mennonite University and a master’s degree in community health at the University of Virginia. She received her nurse-midwifery education at the Frontier School of Nurse-Midwifery and Family Practice in Hyden, Kentucky. She is certified by the American College of Nurse-Midwives.

Nadene works closely with women throughout their pregnancies and labor. A certified nurse midwife collaborates with a physician to deliver babies in the hospital setting. Nadene has been welcoming new lives into the world since 1997. She has also taught childbirth education and been a nursing instructor.

Nadene has launched a national effort called Midwives for Haiti to educate Haitian women about their health and teach them skills used in midwifery to help save the lives of Haitian women during child birth. She travels to Haiti several times a year and also helps other midwives coordinate trips. Nadene and her husband, who is a Church of the Brethren minister, have three grown children.

An American Midwife in Haiti

I traveled to Haiti for the first time in 2003.  I left there a different woman than I came. Women in Haiti are 70 times more likely than women in the U.S. to suffer and die from preventable conditions during pregnancy and childbirth.