Meet Melanie Chevarie
Midwife & Educator
I have spent most of my adult life as a primary care provider & functional medicine practitioner as well as specializing in both remote area low tech midwifery care and training.
Midwifery and Women’s Health has been my passion for over 20 years. I merge contemporary and ancestral knowledge to ensure a holistic, trauma-informed, and evidence-based approach to my care.
Alongside my private practice and my activity as a clinical researcher at the University of New Mexico, I volunteer at Pumwani Maternity Hospital as a midwife and preceptor.
Work Experience
I have been active in the area of women’s health since 2001 and supported helped over a thousand families.
I taught obstetrical emergencies and fistula prevention to numerous birth partitioners and trained over a thousand birth practitioners. I was a faculty member at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, BC, and at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
I trained and practiced within a large scope of knowledge -from menstruation health to menopause, specializing in out-of-hospital birth.
For years, I specialized in remote area midwifery and practiced in Northern Canada with the Inuit communities in Cameroon and Uganda. To this day, I spend part of the year in Kenya, where I have lived for over a decade and where I gave birth to my child.
I am a long-time yoga and meditation practitioner and instructor who taught yoga teacher training in NYC, Montreal, and LA.
Education
I am a Licensed Midwife (LM) in New Mexico and a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) through the North American Registry of Midwives, for whom I serve as a registered preceptor for NARM. I earned a Functional Medicine Certificate, specializing in health for women and children.
I hold a B.S. in Midwifery from the University of Quebec in Canada, a graduate degree in Tropical Medicine, and an advanced degree in Global Health and Human Rights from Geneva University.
I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Master’s in Education specializing in Evidence-Based Teaching of Medicine (MEHP), where I focused my capstone on developing a trauma-informed care program for OBGYNs.
My academic journey includes an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Montreal and a graduate program in Restorative Justice at the Université de Sherbrooke. Finally, I trained in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy from both the Synthesis Institute and Naropa University. I have been trained in Ketamine-Assisted Therapy and MDMA-Assisted Therapy through Lykos/MAPS and specialize in complex trauma.
Trauma Work
I am a faculty at the University of New Mexico, where I am a senior therapist in psychedelic-assisted therapy to address trauma and postpartum depression in a clinical research setting.
I worked as a rape crisis counsellor in emergency rooms in New York City and as a midwife, I supported hundreds of women navigate their sexual and reproductive health traumas. Additionally, I have worked in harm reduction, particularly in the context of perinatal care for people and substance abuse.
I also developed a specialized doula program to support birthing parents with a history of sexual abuse and have trained birth workers in trauma-informed care.
My academic background includes a specialization in complex trauma, with a focus on sexual and reproductive trauma.
By the time I gave birth, I had witnessed several hundreds births.
Yet, I had no idea what birthing my baby would be like or how much I would LOVE birthing my own child.
Birthing my daughter in my full autonomy—feeling honored, witnessed, and respected—reaffirmed my commitment to supporting women and reinforced my commitment to midwife education.
The world needs well-educated and skilled midwives. Women deserve to experience birth as the powerful rite of passage it is intended to be.