Melissa (Missy) Cheyney PhD., LDM, is a Professor of Clinical Medical Anthropology at Oregon State University (OSU) and a Community Midwife. She is Co-Director of Uplift—a research and reproductive equity laboratory at OSU (https://upliftlab.org), where she serves as the Primary Investigator on more than 20 maternal and infant health-related research projects, including the Community Doula Project (https://www.communitydoulaprogram.org/doulas/). She is the author of an ethnography entitled Born at Home (2010, Wadsworth Press) and co-editor of Birth in Eight Cultures (2019, Waveland Press). She has published extensively on the cultural beliefs and clinical outcomes associated with midwife-attended birth at home and in birth centers in the United States. Dr. Cheyney is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care and the chair of the Human Research Protection Program’s Institutional Review Board at OSU.

In 2019, Dr. Cheyney served on the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Birth Settings in America Study, and in 2020 was named Eminent Professor by OSUs Honors College. She also received Oregon State University’s prestigious Scholarship Impact Award for her work in the International Reproductive Health Laboratory and with the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) Statistics Project.