Sharon Ryan CNM, DNP

Sharon Ryan is a certified nurse-midwife with a Doctorate in Nursing Practice who has over 20 years of clinical and administrative experience within the United States and internationally.  Dr. Ryan’s clinical focus has been on the provision of evidenced-based maternal and neonatal care to vulnerable populations in low resource and remote settings. As a practicing certified nurse-midwife, Dr. Ryan was the founder and clinical director of a freestanding birth center providing collaborative care to Amish families in rural Appalachia as well as the clinical director and practicing midwife in a maternity center in remote rural New Zealand and staff midwife in an Alaska Native health and birth center above the Arctic Circle.  Dr. Ryan has travelled in-country as a volunteer for and has provided curriculum development support to the Midwives for Haiti Program, a program that educates Haitian skilled birth attendants and provides medical outreach to rural communities in the Haitian Central Plateau.  As part of her doctoral work, Dr. Ryan provided maternal child health service assessment and human capacity strengthening on site at an Indonesian District Hospital and outreach clinics as part of an MCHIP / USAID sponsored project.  She also developed a competency-based education module for skilled birth attendants in the active management of the third stage of labor, a key intervention in prevention of post-partum hemorrhage, the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide.  Dr. Ryan is a certified trainer in Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) and has taught this course in both Haiti and Ethiopia.  Dr. Ryan is also a certified trainer for the new HBB companion program Essential Care for Every Newborn.

As former Director of the Midwifery and Women’s Health Specialty tracks at The Ohio State University, Dr. Ryan was actively involved in teaching core clinical courses as well as participating in initiatives to increase access to prenatal care and reduce infant mortality in Franklin County, Ohio. These activities include facilitating the integration of certified nurse midwives into the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Teen and Pregnant clinic and the Ohio State University Medical Center as well as facilitating the implementation of Centering Pregnancy, an innovative model of group prenatal care, into the OSU OB/GYN Resident Clinic.

In 2016, Dr. Ryan returned to active clinical practice as the Chief Clinical Officer of Alliance Family Health Center, to facilitate the creation of this federally-qualified health center look-alike in the medically underserved community of Alliance, Ohio. 

Currently, Dr. Ryan is the Director of Midwifery Practice, Education and Global Outreach at the American College of Nurse-Midwives.