By Kim Krisberg, Aug 2019, American Public Health Association
Twenty years ago, working at the bedside in a maternity ward, Hakima Tafunzi Payne saw first-hand how poorly black women were often treated.
“People didn’t go out with the intention to be racist, but you still saw the impact that racism had,” said Payne, MSN, RN, a labor and delivery nurse. “Black families were always held to a different standard, seen as more suspect. White patients were given leeway that black patients were never given.”
Payne tried raising the problem with her colleagues at the time, but no one wanted to listen. So, in between shifts at the Kansas City, Missouri, hospital, Payne began writing down what she saw and imagining how she would design a maternity care system that treated all women humanely.
“Uzazi Village was born in those journals on those night shifts,” she told The Nation’s Health. “I wanted to create models of care that basically circumvented systems that weren’t really intended to benefit black folks. Actually, I’d go even further and say they were designed specifically to exclude blacks folks.”
Now seven years old, Uzazi Village is a Kansas City-based nonprofit working to narrow disparities in maternal and infant health, particularly in black communities. Its signature program is Sister Doulas, which both trains doulas and serves as a community-based doula agency.
A growing body of research shows that doulas — nonclinical professionals who provide support and guidance to women during pregnancy, labor, birth and the post-partum period — are a promising strategy for improving health outcomes, closing disparities and advancing equity in maternity care. In fact, a handful of states are beginning to extend Medicaid coverage for doula care.
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