Member Spotlight: Jalana Lazar

Jalana Lazar, PhD, MPH, CNM, WHNP-BC, is a midwife researcher and author, with 15 years of experience facilitating groups, researching group care globally, and training other group care facilitators and trainers with Group Care Global. A full scope practicing midwife, she is regional clinical faculty at Frontier Nursing University, and an honorary lecturer at City, University of London. She is passionate about advocacy, migrant and refugee health, and building a strong global group care community of practice.

Questions:

1. What inspires your work in group well-child care?

As a student midwife fifteen years ago I was able to participate in a Centering Pregnancy training. I knew immediately that this was a better quality of care for both participants and providers. As soon as I started out in practice I sought out opportunities to become a group care facilitator, starting our own Centering Pregnancy Program and taking it through site certification. It was so positive for participants and myself that I looked for opportunities to expand my knowledge by pursuing a PhD on the experiences of midwives facilitating group care at City, University of London. There I became involved with all the exciting expansion of group care internationally. I am so excited by all the ways in which group care brings communities together and improves care in a wide variety of care contexts all across the globe. I also love the passion that people demonstrate for this care in many languages!

2. What areas of research in group well-child care are you most excited about?

I am most excited about the growing research around implementing group care programs for the first 1000 days of life. I think the prenatal to postnatal continuity for the mother/baby dyad and the whole family is a unique opportunity to really improve a critical care transition period and improve outcomes, but this requires more learning on how to help health systems manage change and collaborate interprofessionally. Group Care is ideally suited for this research and this work.

3. What are the priorities for the group well-child care field?

I believe growing a vibrant global community of practice for researchers, facilitators and policymakers (as well as other supporters and enthusiasts) is important to improve opportunities to collaborate, reduce duplication, and maximize scale up as well as provide vital troubleshooting for implementation and research challenges. I also believe modifying the WHO guidelines around group care to reflect the learning around successful implementation and removing the "research context" caveat is another important next step.