Signy Toquinto (she/her/ella) is a Bay Area native who was born at MarinHealth Medical Center (formerly Marin General Hospital). She is a Certified Nurse Midwife and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner. She graduated from the University of California, San Francisco in 2018. And she is thrilled to be working with the amazing team at Marin Community Clinic. Signy values patient- and family- centered care and shared decision making as hallmarks of equitable, power-sharing models of care. She believes that individuals are the experts on their bodies, health, pregnancies, and formation of their families. She is passionate about working with her clients to make pregnancy and birth an empowering experience accessible to everyone. Signy speaks both English and Spanish.
Signy is committed to improving health for communities most affected by disparities, including, people of color, indigenous and undocumented people, LGBTQ, trans and gender nonconforming, people with disabilities, and people experiencing poverty. She is an advocate for reproductive justice, a human rights and social justice framework that believes all people have the right to choose if, when, where, and with whom to have children, and the right to parent children in safe and sustainable environments. Signy is also an advocate for harm reduction, she has her x-waiver license and prescribes and manages buprenorphine for pregnant people with opioid use disorder.
Prior to becoming a Nurse Midwife, she worked and volunteered in various harm reduction/public health roles for 10+ years serving and supporting people experiencing homelessness, people who use drugs, and street-based sex workers. Signy also completed a masters degree in Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University. She then worked in health care research exploring clinic retention in a HIV primary care safety net hospital, methadone access and detoxification, sex work and pregnancy, trauma informed care, and substance use screening in prenatal care. Signy recently published a research article centering the voices and perspectives of pregnant women of color on substance use screening during prenatal care:
Toquinto, S.M., Roberts, S.C.M., Berglas, N.F., McLemore, M.R. & Delgado, A. (2020). “Pregnant Women’s Acceptability of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drug Use Screening and Willingness to Disclose Use in Prenatal Care” In Women’s Health Issues. https://www.whijournal.com/article/S1049-3867(20)30044-X/abstract