Introducing our Inaugural BFF Grantees

We are thrilled to share with you our inaugural BFF Grantees: Alabama Black Midwives Conference, Birth Detroit, Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawaii, and Dr. Nadia English-Williams. At Birth Future Foundation we are committed to participatory grantmaking with those who are building our liberated birth future. A big thank you to our amazing grantmaking advisory committee Jaqxun Darlin, CPM, Dr. Analena Hassberg, Maia Raynor, and Audra Post. And thank you to all our grassroots donors who power our Birth Future grants!

Here are each of our four grantees describing their work in their own words:

• Alabama Black Midwives Conference, held in May 2022, brings together practitioners, professionals, politicians, and health system leaders from across the attachment state of Alabama, the southern United States, and nationally, to celebrate the passage of a law that established the regulation of licensed midwives in Alabama in 2018 called HB 315. This is the first step in increasing access to the midwifery model of maternal and infant care, and to increasing the number of Black midwives in Alabama.

• Birth Detroit addresses inequitable access to high-quality perinatal care and education for Black families in Detroit through midwifery-led, community-based perinatal clinic Birth Detroit Care. Birth Detroit Care is the only clinic of its kind in Detroit: community-based midwifery services led by Black midwives. The impact for families has been tremendous; it’s now possible for clients to receive high-quality, culturally-congruent care during their pregnancy, during the pandemic, and right in their neighborhood. Clients at Birth Detroit Care receive wraparound care, which includes a full assessment of needs and referrals to trusted providers. This increased community support mitigates the impacts of racism, stress, and other determinants that affect an individual’s social conditions and, ultimately, health outcomes.

• Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawaii Mana Mama Community-Based Doula Program which provides free or low cost doula care to BIPOC birthing people and mamas. The program is based on the power of peer-to-peer support. Because doulas are of and from the same community as their clients, they are able to understand language, cultural needs, and create long-term links to support networks. Clients in the program have been shown to have higher breastfeeding rates, lower C-section rates, and more positive mother-infant interaction.

• Dr. Nadia English-Williams at Uplift Lab is researching “Mixed-methods exploration of “near-miss” birth outcomes for Black  birthing-people.” The purpose of this research is to engage Black birthing people in the United States who nearly died while giving birth in an exploration of the most impactful moments in their  pregnancies. I aim to not only examine those integral instances that participants felt negatively impacted the pregnancy, but to also identify the protective elements  that positively influenced gestation and birth as well.  This project will provide a springboard for re-imaging pathways that bridge the clinical data to real-life impact and support systems for those who nearly died as a result of childbirth. Employing ethnography, themes may emerge that can help us to better understand those  critical moments when a pregnancy moves from healthy to higher risk.

  More about grantmaking at Birth Future Foundation:

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