Description: (American Nurse Midwife and Founder of the 'Frontier Nursing Service')
Mary Breckinridge established the Frontier Nursing Service in rural Kentucky, offering extensive family medical care to underserved areas reachable only by horseback. Inspired by European methods, she sought to elevate American nurse-midwives to operate independently in households and community clinics. Her initiatives notably decreased infant and maternal mortality rates in Appalachia affordably. However, her nurse-midwifery approach did not gain broad recognition in the U.S.