Cooley Dickinson Welcomes Mary Paterno as Director of Midwifery Services

NORTHAMPTON — Cooley Dickinson recently welcomed its new director of Midwifery Services, Mary Paterno, to the Midwifery Center and the staff of Cooley Dickinson Medical Group Women’s Health.

Paterno was the first graduate of the midwifery partnership program between the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Shenandoah University in 2010. She was simultaneously enrolled in the PhD in Nursing program, earning her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2012.

Paterno is highly involved with the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) and currently serves as president of the Massachusetts affiliate of ACNM.

In 2020, she was inducted as a fellow in ACNM and won the prestigious Kitty Ernst Award, given annually to a midwife within their first 10 years of practice who has demonstrated exceptional innovation in midwifery research, clinical practice, education, or administration.

Her clinical experience includes roles as an RN in surgical gynecology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. and in labor and delivery at MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center in Baltimore. Her midwifery career began at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, before she returned to her native New England, where she joined Pioneer Women’s Health and Baystate Franklin Medical Center as the midwifery director for the Moms Do Care EMPOWER program. She was also an assistant professor at UMass Amherst from 2015 to 2020.

Paterno has received several interdisciplinary research grants, has published many papers, and speaks regularly at regional, state, national, and international events on a variety of topics in women’s health and midwifery.