Lucinda Canty
Nurse Midwife, Researcher, & Professor
Dr. Lucinda Canty was born and raised in Connecticut. With three decades working in the nursing profession, she also equally identifies with the titles of activist, artist, poet, historian, and mother. As a nurse midwife, researcher, and educator, her work embodies the intersections and integration of the these many titles. Dr. Canty’s work is fueled by the synergy between science and creativity, justice and healing, in order to envision a more equitable future where nurses and new mothers are able to thrive.
Dr. Canty began her path towards nurse midwifery with an Associates degree in Liberal Arts and Pre-Nursing from the Hartford College for Women, followed by her Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing from Columbia University, and her Master’s of Nursing in Nurse Midwifery from Yale University. She has spent 26 years as a practicing midwife. In 2013 she began her PhD in Nursing at the University of Connecticut where she focused her research on the health disparities of Black women who experienced severe maternal morbidity and the influence of the role of health care professionals.
In Dr. Canty’s 2020 PhD dissertation, titled It’s Not Always Rainbows and Unicorns: The Lived Experience of Severe Maternal Morbidity Among Black Women, she augmented her qualitative data analysis and recruiting materials with her own artwork, displayed here throughout this story.
Dr. Canty’s research interests include the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities in reproductive health, promoting diversity in nursing, and eliminating racism in nursing. She balances research and academia with active participation in the nursing community. In September 2020 she helped launch and lead the Overdue Reckoning on Racism in Nursing with NurseManifest, a standing, open discussion via Zoom for nurses that focuses on coming to terms with racism in nursing — a “reckoning” that acknowledges the reality and begins a process of healing and change.
Dr. Canty has been an Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, Connecticut since 2008 and currently provides women’s health care at Planned Parenthood of New England.
View Dr. Canty’s Nurses You Should Know Video here.
Join the Overdue Reckoning on Racism in Nursing.
Follow Dr. Canty on Twitter.
Sources
The information above was sourced from Dr. Lucinda Canty and LinkedIn.
Learn More
To learn more about inclusion in nursing and be part of the national discussion to address racism in nursing, check out and share the following resources:
Know Your History
- Nursing CLIO to engage with historians and scholars committed to deep work around historical accuracy in healthcare and nursing.
- American Association for the History of Nursing to attend monthly webinars on topics of nursing history, view the calendar here.
Examine Bias
- NurseManifest to attend live zoom sessions with fellow nurses on nursing’s overdue reckoning on racism or to sign their pledge.
- Breaking Bias in Healthcare, an online course created by scientist Anu Gupta, to learn how bias is related to our brain’s neurobiology and can be mitigated with mindfulness.
- Revolutionary Love Learning Hub provides free tools for learners and educators to use love as fuel towards ourselves, our opponents, and to others so that we can embody a world where we see no strangers.
Support & Advocate
- National Coalition for Ethnic Minority Nurse Association to stay engaged with topics relevant to nurses of color.
Help us paint the internet with nursing’s diverse origin stories. Follow this Medium publication, NursesYouShouldKnow on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, or @KnowNurses on Twitter to share and re-post our articles far and wide.
