TCOM alum honored for project about home births
By Alex Branch
A UNT Health Science Center graduate won a national leadership award for creating an educational web resource to help patients who are considering a home birth.
Chandler Sparks, DO, MPH, a 2018 graduate of the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine and a Rural Scholar, was one of 30 people selected as a Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
The program included a scholarship, participation in national conferences and intensive workshops, as well as completion of a project based on each scholars’ track of study.
Dr. Sparks, who is also a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, created Texas Home Birth, which provides information about how the practice of home birth is regulated in Texas, and explains the training of providers who perform it. The academy selected the resource as the best project in Personal and Practice Leadership.
Judges noted there currently is not enough reliable information on home births available to physicians and their patients.
“I’d like the resource to be put in the hands of women and parents in Texas who are considering out-of-hospital birth, as well as physicians with patients who might be considering it,” Dr. Sparks said.
Dr. Sparks is a first-year family medicine resident at St. Louis University School of Medicine.
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