Leading gynecologic health textbook gets a major update
A textbook used in across the nation’s certified nurse-midwife and nurse practitioner training programs just released a substantially revised fifth edition, adding new coverage of abortion and early pregnancy loss, trauma-informed care and reproductive justice, subjects that have moved from the margins of clinical training to the center of gynecologic practice in recent years.
Published by Jones and Bartlett Learning, Gynecologic Health Care: With an Introduction to Prenatal and Postpartum Care has been a standard reference for midwives, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other clinicians for decades, shaping how generations of clinicians are trained to approach gynecologic and reproductive health care.
The fifth edition keeps the holistic, person-centered framework that has defined earlier editions, while responding to a health care landscape that has shifted considerably since the last update: growing demand for abortion and pregnancy-loss care expertise, wider recognition that trauma-informed approaches change patient outcomes, and increasing attention to reproductive justice as a clinical framework, rather than an abstract concept. The new edition also expands on the history of nursing and midwifery, tracing how systems of oppression within health care and education were built and offering strategies to mitigate and transform practice to reduce the harm caused by that history.
The book’s new lead editor, Molly Altman, Associate Professor and PhD Program Director at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene (UH Manoa SONDH), took over this edition alongside co-editor Ellen Solis, Associate Professor and Nurse Midwifery DNP Program Director at the University of Washington. The two were asked by the text’s founding editors to take on the role, based on their standing and expertise in nurse-midwifery education. Together, they are continuing a text that trains a large share of the country’s incoming women’s health clinicians.
Altman brings over two decades of front-line experience to the project. Before joining SONDH in 2024, she spent 21 years as a practicing certified nurse-midwife, caring for patients across the full spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and sexual and reproductive health. She has also spent more than a decade teaching nurses and midwives at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Her research has centered on reducing inequities in reproductive health care, with particular attention to anti-racism and bias in clinical settings. She led the Midwifery Re-Envisioning Project, a community-driven project to identify ways to transform midwifery education to best support Black and Indigenous learners. This work, alongside the Healing Midwifery Together study, a community-based participatory project to envision and develop an integrated midwifery education curriculum, helped inform the new edition’s approach.
That body of work, more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and over $2 million in research funding across 16-plus major studies, earned Altman the Exemplary Nurse Scientist Award at the 2026 Hawaii State Center for Nursing symposium.
As PhD program director at SONDH, Altman has also helped relaunch the school’s Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing program, aimed at growing the pipeline of nurse scientists equipped to address health challenges in Hawaii and beyond. Gynecologic Health Care: With an Introduction to Prenatal and Postpartum Care, 5th Edition, is available now from Jones and Bartlett Learning.