Black women in Missouri are three times more likely to die during pregnancy or within one year after childbirth than white women, according to Missouri’s 2023 Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review.
St. Louis city officials are working to improve the overall birthing process for Black mothers. Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office is partnering with Jamaa Birth Village, a midwifery clinic in Ferguson, to increase awareness of the importance of Black doulas in the birthing process.
“It helps to have other successful Black women who've gone through the birthing process to pass on that knowledge to Black mothers that are currently going through the process [and act] as advocates and also as peer mentors,” said Bobie Williams, St. Louis bureau chief of family, community and school health.
Jamaa Birth Village and Black Mamas Matter Alliance, a national collective of mothers and birth workers, are celebrating Black Doula Day — Thursday — to bring awareness to the doula profession and also demand support for Black maternal health workers from local and national officials and organizations.
Groups of Black maternal health organizations across the country have seven demands, including that doulas be paid equitable reimbursement wages from private insurance and Medicaid at a global reimbursement rate of $3,000, BIPOC-led organizations and doulas be used as experts in drafting legislation for reimbursement, states don't limit doula certification training and mental health support be prioritized for BIPOC doulas.
“Right now we're witnessing states across the nation attempting to regulate doulas, and it's happening in Missouri, and we're pretty much just having to fight our way through it,” said Okunsola Amadou, founder of Jamaa Birth Village.
Amadou said community doula organizations that have been doing the work for years should be consulted on how the state regulates their services, since there is more funding being poured into doula care.
Some Democratic and Republican state legislators and birth workers have been pushing over the past few legislative sessions to include Medicaid reimbursement for doula services. According to the state’s recent mortality report, women on Medicaid are 10 times more likely to die within a year of pregnancy than women on private insurance. Maternal health workers say lawmakers need to do more to save women’s lives and improve birth outcomes.
St. Louis health officials see doulas as one of the solutions to improving the Black maternal health rate in the city. They are working on initiatives that focus on doula care and behavioral health. The city is also increasing the use of community health workers to help provide a positive birthing experience for Black women.
During a panel conversation hosted by the city’s health department last week, doulas, experts and community health workers advocated for more mental health support to help Black women navigate motherhood from prenatal to postpartum.
“When you think about the postnatal care of the mother, we know a lot of our Black mothers are weak, they're in toxic stress environments,” Williams said. “When you talk about the inequity of healthy environments — access to hospitals, food deserts, safe playgrounds … transportation, all these things that will feed into day-to-day living that can increase the amount of toxic stress that a Black mother is experiencing.”
To help bring Black doula awareness to the area, St. Louis officials and Jamaa Birth Village will screen "Sister Doula" at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Delmar DivINe. It is a film by Emmett Williams that highlights Hakima Payne, a doula in the Kansas City region, who works to lower Missouri's Black maternal health disparities.
