Jamaa Birth Village

She traveled to Africa to find her calling. Years later, she’s trained hundreds of doulas.

Jamaa Birth Village in Ferguson and St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office are partnering to help St. Louisans understand the importance of Black doulas.

Doulas and birth centers are considered part of the solution to Missouri’s ‘unacceptable’ maternal mortality crisis. But current law makes it difficult to help mothers most in need.

Jamaa Birth Village plans to open satellite midwifery birthing locations across Missouri next year. Patients can receive midwifery and doula care and social support services.

A 5,000-square-foot birth and postpartum center focusing on Black women is coming to Ferguson. The Jamaa Birth Village Birth Center and Postpartum Retreat Haven will include three water birthing suites and four buildings where people who deliver their babies can stay up to seven days. The project is an expansion of the nearby Jamaa Birth Village.

We wanted to know how environmental issues affect babies and birthing people during childbirth, one of the most delicate life processes. In the U.S., Black babies are two times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies, and Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications then white women. So in this episode, we hear from a documentary filmmaker about humanizing Black birthing people, a neonatal hospitalist about the effects the environment has on newborns and mothers and an executive director of an Equal Access Midwifery Clinic about supporting people of color through the birthing process.

Earlier this year, Brittany "Tru" Kellman’s efforts got a big boost: a $1 million grant to train hundreds of doulas in an effort to reduce Missouri's maternal mortality rates and racial disparities. Kellman and her Jamaa Birth Village team are partnering with local nonprofit Generate Health on the three-year project.

Mercy Health will soon begin construction on a clinic in Ferguson that will provide medical and mental health care to residents in north St. Louis County. The 5,500-square-foot health center will anchor a planned Florissant Avenue development that includes a grocery store and youth center.

Mercy Health has agreed to pull midwifery services from a planned primary care clinic in Ferguson after a local midwife accused the health system of…

Since Brittany “Tru” Kellman started Jamaa Birth Village in 2015, she’s sought to provide a community-driven solution to an ongoing nationwide health…