‘It starts with us': Roanoke organizations teaming up to combat Black maternal mortality crisis

Doulas are becoming a more widely used resource among pregnant people, particularly Black women who historically face racial inequities during pregnancy and childbirth. Groups like The Doula Network and the Southern Birth Justice Network are working to expand doula services by training and connecting pregnant women with certified doulas. Doula care is more holistic and studies show that women using doulas have about a 65% reduction in their odds of developing postpartum depression or anxiety when a doula is present during labor and delivery.

The Iowa Black Doula Collective trains doulas to help educate and advocate for Black women during pregnancy and childbirth. Research shows women who work with doulas are less likely to have low birth-weight babies and experience birth complications. Since forming in 2020, the Collective has raised over $200,000 and trained 64 Black doulas.

In an effort to combat high rates of maternal mortality and healthcare disparities among pregnant Black women, MLK Community Hospital offers combined care from certified nurse midwives and obstetricians to ensure a safe, healthy birth. Midwifery offers more sensitive and individualized care and is also linked to fewer C-sections and preterm births. At MLK Community Hospital, 14% of its first-time, low-risk births involved a C-section, compared to 23% of such births across the state.

In partnership with Open Path Resource, Hennepin Healthcare started integrating spiritual care into the medical care plan for Muslim patients to address stigma and build trust with medical professionals. The addition of spiritual care has had a significant impact on the hospital’s psychiatry department, reducing readmission rates from 24% in 2019, to 9% in 2023.

Black parents are at greater risk of experiencing serious complications during pregnancy and childbirth, which is why preserving Black birth care, like doulas, is so important to preventing unnecessary deaths and medical interventions. The doula community is growing and there’s currently a push among local doulas and providers to grow the network of doulas of color to increase the accessibility of relevant and representative birth care.

With its focus on research and the launch of the Safer Baby Bundle, Australia is ahead of the curve in preventing stillbirths. The Safer Baby Bundle includes evidence-based practices to prevent stillbirths including helping pregnant patients quit smoking, regularly monitoring fetal growth and movement and encouraging safe pregnancy practices like sleeping on one’s side. Since the launch of these strategies, the country sees about six stillbirths a day, whereas the U.S. experiences about 60 stillbirths each day.

Mexico's Pilot Program for Licensed Physicians brings Mexican doctors to the states to address the lack of culturally relevant healthcare and Spanish-speaking healthcare providers, particularly in rural areas with large immigrant populations. Currently, the program has 30 Mexican doctors working in various counties throughout the state.

In an effort to reduce maternal mortality for Native mothers, Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services provides free physical, emotional, educational and spiritual support to Indigenous mothers and their families throughout the entire pregnancy and birth process. Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services emerged in 2019 and since then its team of five Indigenous doulas has provided culturally-relevant care to more than 150 pregnant Native women with a maternal and infant mortality rate of zero.

The Women-Inspired Neighborhood (WIN) Network: Detroit works to improve Black infant health outcomes by providing support services like group prenatal care, targeted home visits, and breastfeeding programs. By using the CenteringPregancy model, over 600 women have gone through the program and there have been zero preventable infant deaths. Win also helps direct women toward resources like stable housing and higher education.

The Nurse-Family Partnership pairs low-income, first-time parents with a personal nurse from pregnancy through their child's second birthday. The Partnership serves 56,000 families each year, and works to help improve pregnancy outcomes for both parents and their babies through early education, access to care and helping to empower parents to get the care they need.