Patricia Harman , a certified nurse-midwife, will give a presentation about the challenges of providing health care for women in Appalachia Tuesday (March 3) at West Virginia University .

Her talk, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7 p.m. in the Rhododendron Room of the Mountainlair.

Harman is the author ofThe Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwifes Memoirand a regular presenter at national midwifery conferences. She has been published in The Journal of Midwifery and Womens Health and The Journal of Sigma Theta Tau for Nursing Scholarship.

She started as a lay midwife in rural communes, where she lived in the 1960s and70s, and she became a nurse-midwife on the faculty at Ohio State and Case Western Reserve universities and WVU .

In a review of her book, People magazine said,A flower child who found her calling after coaching a friend through a home birth, nurse-midwife Harman works with her OB/GYN husband at a West Virginia clinic. In her sweetly perceptive memoir, she reveals how her exam room becomes a confessional. Coaxing women in thin blue gowns to share secretsabout abusive boyfriends, OxyContin habits, unplanned pregnanciesshe reminds them that theyre not alone.

Harmans presentation is sponsored by the WVU Center for Womens Studies , the Association for Women in Science student club at WVU and the West Virginia professional chapter of AWIS .