Sally Tracy

Sally Tracy DMid is an Australian, midwife, midwifery researcher, author and activist.

Tracy is the Professor of Midwifery at the University of Sydney and the Royal Hospital for Women, Sydney and a Conjoint Professor, University of New South Wales, Sydney.[1] She is based at the Midwifery and Women's Health Research Unit at the Royal Hospital for Women, Randwick, Sydney. Her research projects include the safety of primary level (especially rural) maternity hospitals and Birth Centres in Australia and the evaluation of midwifery led units.[2][3][4] She was currently the chief investigator on a large multicentre randomised controlled trial of caseload midwifery care, funded by a project grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.[5] The findings from this research demonstrated that caseload midwifery is cheaper and safer that fragmented care.[6][7]

She has authored numerous research articles. She was a joint author of the National Maternity Action Plan.

She is the co-author of the main midwifery textbook in Australia, Midwifery - Preparation for Practice which is now in its third edition.

For the past fifteen years Tracy has been at the forefront of midwifery politics in Australia. She has challenged the Australian maternity system through research and practice development in a bid to get a better deal for women in childbirth.[8] She helped to set up the Ryde Midwifery Caseload Practice, in Sydney, in 2003. Her current research questions the acceptability of the increasing interference of obstetrics with the physiological birth process.[9]