Kim Q. Dau Oral History Interview, 2022

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Summary

Creator:
Dau, Kim Q.
Abstract:
Kim Quang Dau, RN, MS, CNM, is a Clinical Professor of Midwifery in the School of Nursing at the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), a Certified Nurse-Midwife at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the Director of UCSF's Nurse-Midwifery/WHNP Program, and a co-lead for UCSF's Midwifery Mentoring and Belonging Program. From 2007 to 2010, Dau was a Staff Midwife with Duke Midwifery Service, and the Coordinator for the Centering Pregnancy program facilitated in collaboration with Durham County Department of Public Health in locations including Lincoln Community Health Center and El Centro Hispano. This collection contains 1 oral history interview conducted on October 19, 2022 by Josephine McRobbie as part of the Duke Midwifery Service and Durham Maternal Health Oral History Project, which was funded by The Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation Endowment Fund. In the interview, Dau discusses her path to midwifery, patient-centered care in a community setting, and the experience of change in healthcare systems. The themes of this interview include midwifery, community healthcare, and medical training.
Extent:
1 Interview (1 transcript) and 458 MB
Language:
English
Collection ID:
OH.DAUK

Background

Scope and content:

Includes 1 oral history interview with Kim Q. Dau conducted on October 19, 2022 by Josephine McRobbie as part of the Duke Midwifery Service and Durham Maternal Health Oral History Project, which was funded by The Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation Endowment Fund.
In the October 19, 2022 interview, Dau discusses her path to midwifery, patient-centered care in a community setting, and the experience of change in healthcare systems. The themes of this interview include midwifery, community healthcare, and medical training.

Biographical / historical:

Kim Quang Dau, RN, MS, CNM, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. She received her BS in Biology from Duke University in 2001. As an undergraduate with an interest in Neuroscience, she also centered non-Western medicine practices in her studies, and led a student-taught House Course on this topic at Duke. She met Duke Midwifery Service's Amy MacDonald when she invited MacDonald to speak to her class about midwifery. MacDonald's engaging presentation and showing of the Monty Python sketch "The Miracle of Birth" made a substantial impact on Dau, resonating with her about the failure of the healthcare system. Dau went on to shadow MacDonald during her undergraduate education, learning firsthand about midwifery.
After graduation, Dau worked for a number of midwifery programs and returned to school in 2004, receiving her MS in Nursing from the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) in 2007. While at UCSF, Dau was trained by midwives who established Centering Pregnancy programs, such as Margy Hutchison, who led the build-out of Centering Pregnancy at a site called Homeless Prenatal, and Rebekah Kaplan, who held Centering groups at Hilltop High School in San Francisco (a high school for pregnant and parenting teens).
In 2007 Dau was recruited back to Duke Midwifery Service as a Staff Midwife and the Coordinator for the Centering Pregnancy program facilitated in collaboration with Durham County Department of Public Health in locations including Lincoln Community Health Center and El Centro Hispano. She remained in these roles until 2010. Dau brought many of the innovations of Centering programs with her to Durham in order to facilitate mobile clinics. During her time as a Duke midwife and Centering Coordinator, Dau remained engaged with her interests in power, partnership, and exchange in medicine. In the Centering program, the prenatal care offered is a model where the midwife facilitates the group. It is not a treated like a childbirth education class. This model gives people space to have more power in their healthcare relationship, which aligns fundamentally with the practice of midwifery.
After leaving Duke, Dau moved back to San Francisco, Dau and is a Clinical Professor of Midwifery in the School of Nursing at UCSF, a Certified Nurse-Midwife at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the Director of UCSF's Nurse-Midwifery/WHNP Program, and a co-lead for UCSF's Midwifery Mentoring and Belonging Program. Dau is driven by her experiences to train and support more midwives, especially midwives of color. Dau strongly believes that the healthcare model to strive for is one where midwives attend the majority of births.
In 2014, Dau was awarded the Kitty Ernst Award by the American College of Nurse-Midwives, which honors an exceptional, relatively new CNM who has been certified for less than 10 years and has demonstrated innovative, creative endeavors in midwifery and/or women's health clinical practice, education, administration, or research.

Acquisition information:
Accession A2023.020 (transferred by Josephine McRobbie, April 2023)
Processing information:

Processed by Lucy Waldrop: May 2023

Arrangement:
Organized into the following series: Interview, October 19, 2022.
Rules or conventions:
DACS

Contents

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Terms of access:

Copyright for Official University records is held by Duke University; all other copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Kim Q. Dau Oral History Interview, Duke University Medical Center Archives.