Sascha James-Conterelli
Dr. Sascha James-Conterelli is a nurse-midwife and health leader who has worked in public and private healthcare settings since 2002. Inspired by her mother, a physician, she has focused on improving maternal care and reducing racial disparities. She has held board roles in New York, contributed to a CDC review on maternal mortality, and continues as Program Director for Midwifery at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing.
She grew up on St. Croix and later moved to Brooklyn for school. She earned a BSN from Howard University in 1996 and a PhD from New York University in 2012, researching ways to reduce elective deliveries. Her first midwifery job in Rockland County showed her how race, geography, and education affect the quality of care, which pushed her toward health administration to drive broader change.
Returning to St. Croix, where resources are limited, she founded Taino Whole Life Wellness in 2023 to support expectant mothers and improve local care. Her work aims to address systemic racism and implicit bias in perinatal care and to promote respectful communication.
She has been involved in policy work, serving as co-chair of Governor Cuomo's Maternal Mortality and Racial Disparities Task Force (since 2018), and as a member of the COVID-19 Maternity Task Force and New York State's Maternal Mortality Review Board. She has spoken during Black Maternal Health Week about mortality, inequities, and education.
To build a stronger local workforce, she envisions a partnership between the University of the Virgin Islands and NYU that would give Virgin Islanders access to NYU resources and training opportunities without losing local workers, while letting NYU residents gain experience in the Virgin Islands. She also hopes to create pathways for Virgin Islanders to study at Howard University.
Her work highlights a sobering reality: Black, college-educated women face much higher maternal mortality rates than white women, underscoring the need for respectful, culturally aware care and better health systems.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:18 (CET).