Meet Vanessa Page, the 2025 HESTA Awards Midwife of the Year

In mid-May, Vanessa Page was surprised and humbled to be named the Midwife of the Year at the 2025 HESTA Nursing and Midwifery Awards. Vanessa was recognised for leading the Endorsed Midwife Care Program at Gateway Health in the Albury and Wodonga region.

‘There are many innovative midwives in Australia doing wonderful things,’ she tells ANMF. ‘I am just one of them, so I feel very humble to have been named Midwife of the Year.’

A journey across Australia and the world

A nurse practitioner as well as an endorsed midwife, Vanessa grew up just outside of Shepparton. Her career has taken her all over Australia and around the world, but she was perhaps always destined to find her way back to northern Victoria.

Vanessa studied nursing in Melbourne before heading to New Zealand, where she worked for a time in the surgical ward at Timaru Hospital. When she returned to Australia, Vanessa spent some time travelling, before eventually stopping in Alice Springs to take up a job in local hospital’s ICU.

‘It was this experience that sparked my passion for remote and Aboriginal health,’ she says.

After a detour via the UK, where she worked in ICU at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Vanessa completed an intensive care postgraduate diploma and then headed home to Shepparton. ‘From there it was remote for the next 15 years,’ she says.

This started with another stint back in Alice Springs ICU, before she headed out to Mutitjulu at the base of Uluru, where she worked as remote area nurse. While here, Vanessa completed a Master of Remote Health Practice at Flinders University (Centre for Remote Health) – and also realised that she needed to become a midwife to complement her remote work.

After she gained her midwifery qualifications, Vanessa made her way to the Kimberley where she worked as a remote midwife in Fitzroy Crossing and Derby for the next decade. Again realising that her work would benefit from further upskilling, Vanessa spent her downtime here achieving her nurse practitioner and endorsed midwife qualifications but it wasn’t until she moved back to Victoria six years ago that she finally got to utilise both endorsements. And she’s never looked back!

Today, Vanessa works as nurse practitioner at Yackandandah Health Medical Centre, and as both a nurse practitioner and endorsed midwife at Gateway Health in Wodonga. She advocated for and ultimately initiated these models of care in both organisations, and she was delighted to have – and retain – their full support.

Addressing gaps in regional maternity care

The HESTA award recognises Vanessa for her work establishing and leading Gateway Health’s Endorsed Midwife Care Program. Despite its name, she also provides advanced nurse practitioner care through the program.

‘I was very fortunate to have a couple of managers at Gateway Health in the early days who shared my vision and supported me to scope and then pilot the program,’ she explains. ‘Since then, I have had unbelievable support from Gateway Health’s executive, board members, managers and colleagues to continue the program – despite having no funding.’

Vanessa says that even though her Medicare billings generate a small income, ‘there is still a significant out-of-pocket expense that Gateway Health needs to cover so they are currently seeking funding to secure the program’s future and potential growth.’

That future and potential growth is vital. ‘There is limited public midwife antenatal care in the Albury Wodonga region,’ Vanessa notes. Options include the Maternity Antenatal Postnatal Service at Albury Wodonga Health, which primarily looks after lower-risk women; and the Endorsed Midwife Program at Albury Wodonga Aboriginal Health Service, which accepts First nations clients only. ‘Most of the Gateway Health clients are not eligible for either of these programs,’ Vanessa says.

And while Wodonga has had ‘exponential – and fabulous – growth in endorsed midwives, understandably most have an out-of-pocket expense,’ Vanessa notes.

Until recently there was limited public high-risk obstetric care in the region, and women were required to attend a private obstetrician with a fee for service. ‘Many women cannot afford these appointments, along with the costs associated with ultrasounds,’ Vanessa says. ‘For this reason, vulnerable and complex pregnancies may end up with inconsistent or limited care. There is now a high-risk obstetric clinic at Albury Wodonga Health, which has been so helpful to the program.’

The point of difference offered by Gateway Health’s Endorsed Midwife Care Program is that it has ‘evolved into an all-risk continuity of midwife care program for vulnerable members of the community, in particular culturally and linguistically diverse clients,’ Vanessa explains. ‘The program is well networked with the pregnancy care providers in the region, so these more complex women are linked in where they need to be, but not at the expense of missing out on continuity of midwife care.’

Having gained the experience and the qualifications, Vanessa is proud to be able to work to her full scope of practice in both models of care.

The power of continuity of care

Gateway Health is a registered not-for-profit community health service that provides care across the border region of northeast Victoria and southern New South Wales. When Vanessa began working there, she quickly identified a need and began scoping for the program in 2020. In 2021, she welcomed her first client.

Since then, she has worked with almost 250 women, and today the program is running at capacity, providing continuity of midwifery care – in particular to higher-risk clients with complex social and clinical needs, who are often exempted from midwifery care.

‘Pregnancy and birth are normal physiological processes,’ Vanessa notes. ‘Continuity of care with a known midwife is gold standard and this is well supported by evidence. With midwifery-led care you are more likely to have a normal birth, have your baby at term, have a positive labour and birth experience, feel satisfied with your pregnancy care, successfully breastfeed your baby and will cost the health system less.’

Because the Endorsed Midwife Care Program provides both experienced midwifery and advanced nurse practitioner care, it allows for ‘more comprehensive service provision,’ Vanessa says. This has no doubt been part of the key to its success.

‘I am passionate about my work in women’s and maternal health, and in particular the care I provide to vulnerable people in my community,’ Vanessa says. ‘I have worked hard to become an endorsed midwife and nurse practitioner, and I am grateful for the comprehensive nature of service provision that having the two endorsements enables.

‘I am proud of the unique model of care that I initiated out of need at Gateway Health but couldn’t have achieved the Endorsed Midwife Care Program without the support of the organisation, managers and colleagues. And most importantly the clients who have entrusted their pregnancy journey with the program: their contribution is so rich.’

In 2011, Vanessa was proud to be recognised with the Remote Midwife of the Year award at the WA Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Awards but she says that being named as a finalist for, and then winner of, Australian Midwife of the Year at the HESTA Australian Nursing and Midwifery Awards has been one of the biggest highlights of her career.

‘I know the nomination was for the model of care I have created and am delivering at Gateway Health, but winning this award is a celebration of my whole career to date,’ she says, before concluding, simply, ‘I truly love being a nurse and a midwife.’