(Pronouns: she/her) Heather Bradford is a Seattle-based midwife educator, health services researcher, administrator, and clinician with a passion for midwifery and women's health. She strives to grow and diversify the midwifery and WHNP workforce, address inequities within perinatal care, and improve perinatal outcomes.
She currently serves as the Assistant Program Director for the Nurse-Midwifery/Women's Health Nurse Practitioner and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner Programs. She joined the GU community in 2017. She was a 2019-2021 GUMC Bias Reduction Improvement Coaching (BRIC) Program Trainer and a mentee in the 2021-2022 GUMC Mentoring Program. She was accepted into the GUMC Teaching Academy for the Health Sciences as a Principle member in 2024.
Clinically, she has been a midwife since 2002 and has provided full-scope midwifery at EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, WA, now in a per diem capacity. She has attended almost 800 births.
She has advocated for advanced practice nurses at both the state and federal legislative front. Under her leadership in coalition with other nurse leaders, WA ARNPs acquired the capacity to prescribe without a joint practice agreement. While Chair of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) Government Affairs Committee, nurse-midwives achieved equitable reimbursement under Medicare Part B services. She has served on the WA State Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission as a member of the ARNP Subcommittee and participated in case review. She was appointed by the Department of Health to a state advisory committee working to improve maternal and child health outcomes. She has also served on the WA State Maternal Mortality Review Panel and on the Partnership for Patients Safe Deliveries Roadmap Steering Committee with the WA State Hospital Association. She became a Fellow of ACNM in 2011. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in leading midwifery and women's health textbooks. She was the Associate Editor of Clinical Practice Guidelines for Midwifery and Women's Health. She has received several prestigious awards from ACNM, including the 2019 Excellence in Teaching Award, the Varney Participant Award, the Newton Long Award, the Public Policy Award, and the Kitty Ernst “Young Whippersnapper” Award. She has also won the WA State “Top Nurse Practitioner” Award from Seattle Met Magazine from 2013 to 2018.
She served as Secretary to the ACNM Racism in Midwifery Education Task Force and Vice Chair of the ACNM Fellows Board of Governors. She was a 2023 Journal of Maternal Child Health Nursing Editorial Fellow. She is also a site visitor with the Accreditation Commission for Midwifery Education (ACME). She recently completed a PhD in nursing science from Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, studying weight bias among midwives.