Elise Erickson , PhD, CNM, FACNM

Elise Erickson PhD, CNM, FACNM has been a Certified Nurse Midwife since 2005 and earned a PhD in 2018 at Oregon Health and Science University where she served as a faculty midwife from 2014-2022. Her research lab, "Mechanisms Underpinning Maternal Health" (MUMH), is broadly focused on understanding variation in the physiology governing labor and birth to improve individualization of care practices and promote healthy transitions to motherhood/parenthood. At the University of Arizona she conducts research on epigenetic and genetic variation in oxytocin function for improving the use of oxytocin during the birth process and addressing postpartum hemorrhage specifically. In addition, her work includes the role of epigenetic aging (biological aging) in maternal health and maternal morbidity. Through this line of study, Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) and social environmental factors (adversity/ support) are considered for their role in contributing to epigenetic age acceleration. In addition, Dr. Erickson conducts studies using wearable devices for monitoring maternal autonomic/ hormonal physiology during pregnancy with the objective of understanding signals leading up to pregnancy complications or events for enhanced prediction of labor or pregnancy-related complications. She specializes in latent mixture modeling for understanding heterogeneous and complex phenomenon. She is accepting doctoral and post-doctoral trainees. She lives in Tucson and enjoys playing in nature with her children, spouse and dogs "Biscuit" and "Gravie."