North Kingstown Researcher Named Nurse Midwife of the Year

NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI—North Kingstown's Debra Erickson-Owens, a nurse-midwife and PhD at Women & Infants Hospital researching infant brain development, has been named "Nurse Midwife of the Year" by Rhode Island Monthly.

Erickson-Owens earns the distinction after practicing as a certified nurse midwife for more than 30 years, helping more than 1,400 women give birth over her career. She's also served as an active duty U.S. Air Force Nurse Corp officer and midwife.

Today, in addition to her work as an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island's College of Nursing, Erickson-Owens is a co-lead investigator of the Infant Brain Study, which focuses on the difference in brain development between babies who have immediate umbilical cord clamping compared to those with delayed cord clamping.

When a baby is born, the doctor or midwife clamps and cuts the baby's umbilical cord, either immediately or after a delay of a few minutes. Most are immediately clamped but "we do not know if babies who recieve more blood cells and iron from delayed umbilical cord clamping have different brain development than babies who have their umbilical cord cut immediatley," according to a study summary.

The study has been underway since 2012 and is set to end in December of 2017.

A graduate of Boston University, Erickson-Owens earned a masters degree in nurse-midwifery at the University of Utah, a post masters certificate in nursing education at the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in nursing at the University of Rhode Island.

In 1998, she joined the URI faculty in the Graduate Nurse-Midwifery Program. In 2008, while pursuing her doctorate, she began working as a research assistant at Women & Infants’ Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk. In 2012, she was awarded a grant, along with Drs. Judith Mercer and Sean Deoni, from the National Institutes of Health/Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study the timing of umbilical cord clamping and its effect on early brain development.

Erickson-Owens also works as an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island's College of Nursing.