The COVID-19 pandemic: A focusing event to promote community midwifery policies in the United States

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented stress on health care systems across the globe. This stress has altered prenatal, labor, delivery, and postpartum care in the U.S., motivating many pregnant people to seek maternal health care with community midwives in a home or freestanding birth center setting. Although the dominant maternal health care providers across the globe, community midwives work on the margins of the U.S. health care system, in large part due to policy restrictions. This commentary extends previous research to theorize that the COVID-19-related disrupted health care system and the heightened visibility of community midwives may create a “focusing event,” or policy window, which may enable midwives and their advocates to shift policy.