Elizabeth Sager SharpCNM, DrPH, FAAN, FACNM, (December 16, 1933 - February 7, 2016) was an American nurse and midwife who specialized in maternal and newborn health. In 1999, she received the American College of Nurse-Midwives' Hattie Hemschemeyer Award.[1]
Sharp set up the Yale Young Mothers program to support teenage mothers.[3] She believed that midwifery services must include family planning.[3]
In 1970 Sharp moved to Georgia.[4] She was one of the founders of the midwife service at Grady Memorial Hospital (the Emory University Nurse-Midwifery Service).[3][4] In the 1970s Sharp set up a graduate midwifery training program, the Emory University Nurse-Midwifery Program, at Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of NursingatEmory University.[1][3] She was also one of the founders of the Graduate School of Public Health at Emory.[1][2]
Sharp was president of the American College of Nurse-Midwives between 1973 and 1975.[3] She is said to have "the credit for [setting up] midwifery in Georgia”.[4]
After her death at the age of 82, a scholarship was set up in her name at Emory University.[3] Her role in the history of midwifery and nursing has been studied.[4][5]
"Relationships between Professions: From the Viewpoint of the Physician and Nurse‐Midwife in a Tertiary Center" (1981), with W. Newton Long, in Bulletin of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics Vol. III, No. 3. pp. 184–200, and then in Journal of Nurse-Midwifery, 1982[6]
"Nurse-midwifery education: its successes, failures, and future" (1983), in Journal of Nurse-Midwifery, 28(2):17-23
