Our History & Values
Birth of Geneva Woods Birth Center & "The Nest"
Geneva Woods Birth Center opened its doors in January 2002 after Midnight Sun Birth Center abruptly closed its doors in December 2001. Not wanting to leave Anchorage with only one other birth center, Barbara and Karin invested their energies into forming a new birth center option for Anchorage families, and were able to open with state licensure and national accreditation only months after Midnight Sun closed.
Geneva Woods Birth Center was originally built inside the Geneva Woods Medical Center on Rhone Circle, but moved to a new location in 2014 to escape the medical office condominium environment. We moved to a beautifully remodeled house, secluded amongst tall trees, at 2400 E 42nd Avenue, and opened those doors on Summer Solstice 2014, celebrating our 1058th birth that same day. Geneva Woods Midwifery was formed when the original founders of Geneva Woods Birth Center parted ways with Midwifery & Women's Healthcare and began a new midwifery practice here at Geneva Woods Birth Center. "The Nest" was the nickname that Barbara gave this cozy former-homestead-cabin space on E 42nd, and it stuck. We reached just a few shy of 2000 births here at the birth center before ceasing deliveries here at the end of 2024.
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Transition to Geneva Woods Women's & Family Wellness
Geneva Woods Birth Center ceased operation as a birth center at the very end of 2024, after many months of being unable to replace the midwives who moved out of state or left to take hospital-only positions... Fortunately, this did not mean the end of the medical practice, since Geneva Woods Midwifery had been slowly adding other provider types to be able to give truly holistic care to our clients and families since 2019. We first added pelvic floor physical therapy in 2019, followed by counseling, nutrition therapy, and, most recently, a Family Practice Nurse Practitioner, in 2025. Barbara Norton passed the Menopause Society's exam to be certified as a Menopause Provider in 2021, and is also pursuing continuing education in the field of women's sexual health through the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health, so specialize in these under-served areas of women's health. We are so pleased to now be able to provide care to women, men and children, in a variety of different ways, both preventative and problem-focused. Midwives have always been known for their "high-touch, low-tech" approach to pregnancy and birth, and we can now apply this model (when appropriate) to preventative care, chronic condition management, 'lifestyle medicine,' perimenopause, and more!
Our Values
Collaboration
Being a multidisciplinary group since 2019, our providers have embraced the learning and the benefits to patient care that comes from collaboration with their colleagues. One of the many valid critiques of the US healthcare system is that most fields of medicine are very "siloed," with providers not sharing information or collaborating on care plans across specialties. In addition to each of our providers truly embodying the 'whole person' approach to healthcare, collaboration between providers here on shared clients can bring tremendous benefits to their care, in the form of truly individualized solutions and approaches that fit with clients' lives, needs, and constraints.
Education
We take the concepts of ‘informed consent’ and ‘informed refusal’ very seriously here at the Nest. To us, a client cannot make an informed choice unless they have all the facts, so we spend the time that it takes to help clients understand the choices in front of them. We have a lending library in our office full of books that we find to be evidence-based and informative, and we curate and develop handouts that incorporate evidence-based information that is easy to understand and actionable. Knowledge is power, especially in health care. Although it's always been somewhat difficult to know what kinds of health information you can trust, and from whom, it's gotten even more difficult with the advent of social media, where anyone can have a platform, and often the loudest and most confident voices win out over those who embrace nuance and expertise. The simple act of taking the time to give clients in-depth explanations and thoroughly answer their questions, based on our understanding of what the best available science shows, goes a long way toward building trust and helping people feel invested in the care approach that they co-create with our providers.
Evidence-Based
This is a buzzword you might be hearing more and more of these days. What this means is that before recommending a test, treatment, or course of action, we look at the available evidence to see if it is effective, and if its benefits outweigh its costs – in side effects, dollars, and risk of harm.
In our practice, we endeavor to use only tests, treatments and medical interventions that are proven to be effective. Most importantly, since clinical guidelines have been changing so frequently on topics that impact women such as breast cancer screening, pap smears, and pelvic exams, we take the time to come up with an approach that suits each client’s tolerance for risk and/or false-positives, family history, and their desire for testing, rather than reflexively following old or new guidelines.
Integrity
To us, integrity means both honesty and transparency. It means avoiding some of the common conflicts of interest one might find in a health care office, such as referring patients for “needed” labs or imaging services using a lab or imaging equipment owned by that same clinician or office, or selling the supplements that the clinician recommends as a treatment for a specific condition or for overall wellness (aside from those used for lactation purposes, a field in which no placebo-controlled testing can be done to verify efficacy for ethical reasons). Sometimes these services or products really are necessary or beneficial, but how can the average person really know or judge, when conflicts of interest are also present? We do not provide laboratory testing in-house, or ‘pass-through billing’ for labs that we order, or resell lab tests at a profit, such as the 'Dutch Test' or gut microbiome testing, and thus have no financial incentive to order any tests – meaning we only order what we believe you need, and what the standards of care call for.
Respect: Providing health care that is sensitive and responsive to the needs of our clients must always stem from mutual respect.
We respect your time by endeavoring to always start your visits on time. It is rare that visits in our office start more than 10 minutes late, with most starting on time or less than 5 minutes late.
We respect your finances by only ordering testing and treatment that we believe that you need. Unlike most offices, we offer multiple options of laboratories so that we can help you get the best price for some of the more expensive, elective testing such as cfDNA testing and genetically-inherited disease carrier screening. We work with both Quest and LabCorp so that we can make sure that we are sending tests to your preferred lab. We endeavor to always refer you to in-network specialists and in-network imaging centers.
We respect your right to make informed choices about your care. We will always strive to give you the most up-to-date, evidence-based information that is supported by a broad consensus of experts in their field, and you get to decide what you want to do with that information.
Community
We have always felt a strong obligation and desire to both create community and to give back to the community. In the past we have created community by hosting events for our families where they could reconnect with us and meet other families with kids, such as our old annual Halloween party, free fitness parties at the Alaska Club, free postpartum physical therapy events, and the occasional anniversary party. We give back to the community in a variety of ways. We have sponsored family-friendly events such as NSAA’s Solstice Tree tour in Kincaid, the Gold Nugget Triathlon, Lost Lake Breath of Life Run (benefiting the CF Foundation), The Ski for Women, and the Mountain Bike Festival for Women. We currently offer a "pop-up" book club that meets monthly, and is open to all, featuring entirely non-fiction books on topics that relate to women's (and people's in general) health and wellbeing.
We participate in local medical conferences and lecture at others. Barbara Norton has been at times adjunct faculty and a guest lecturer at UAA for many years. Our office helps train CNM, FNP and RN students as a clinical site. We have a long history of supporting (in many different ways) of the American Association of Birth Centers (AABC), which helps new and established birth centers around the country to spread this wonderful model of care. Barbara is an active member of The Menopause Society and of The International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health.