Janelle Palacios, Ph.D., CNM (Salish/Kootenai; She/Her) is a nurse midwife, researcher, lecturer and storyteller originally from the Flathead Indian Reservation located in Montana. Dr. Palacios is the founder of Encoded 4 Story and co-founder of SquareRoot Stories, story based consulting firms helping individuals and organizations link the importance of history and story to address and improve maternal/child health outcomes grounded in family and community engagement.
Dr. Palacios has served as Co-President of the Native Research Network, the nation’s largest organization of health research focused Native American researchers and allies, created by Native people. Earlier in her career, Dr. Palacios worked with tribal nations and communities identifying the strengths of young parenting. Through story work, Dr. Palacios expanded our understanding of motherhood formation among young mothers.
Her expertise in Indigenous maternal health has been recognized both regionally through consultation work, and nationally through her 4 year appointment as a committee member on the Advisory Committee on Infant & Maternal Mortality, under Health Resources and Services Administration. Additionally, she was the Co-Chair of the Health Equity Workgroup within this advisory committee, and was a key author of the first American Indian/Alaska Native Maternal and Infant focused report from this committee submitted to the Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, entitled “Making Amends: Recommended Strategies & Actions to Improve the Health and Safety of American Indian and Alaska Native Mothers and Infants.”
Through consultation work, Dr. Palacios has extended her content expertise to include access to health care services among rural indigenous women, has served as a content expert for the CDC’s “Hear Her” campaign, is a project design consultant for a nation wide campaign to enhance understanding of fetal, infant and maternal mortality review employing storytelling as a method through the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention, and serves as a American Indian/Alaska Native content population expert consultant for the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs designing an anti-racist health equity promoting population research curriculum, and more recently is integrating storytelling into The StoryWork Project, an innovative health equity tool that integrates history and storytelling to spark actions for change to better maternal/child/infant outcomes among BIPOC populations.
In concert with her outside expertise, Dr. Palacios has been a midwife in Northern California for more than a decade and is the Chair of the Supporting Vaginal Birth Committee at her workplace. Currently Dr. Palacios is an attending, teaching OB/GYN residents while also mentoring residents on large data based studies to support vaginal birth.
