Neighborhood Birth Center

I am a proven leader working on an innovative solution to one of humanity’s most urgent problems - the maternal health crisis. I have been working in a volunteer capacity for 6 years, taking personal risks to manifest a 30 year old vision to transform Boston’s healthcare landscape through the integration of a community birth center. I have written the business plans, launched the organizational structure, met with the architects, and built a powerful community and national network, all while rubbing pennies together. But the compounded crises of 2020 amplified the need for safe out of hospital birth and created space for leaders of color, particularly Black women. We accelerated our fundraising efforts and as of January 2021, I am paid half time and am hiring staff. The Elevate Prize would help build my capacity and would seed a sustainable investment in community health infrastructure. I have given this project all of myself, and my team is poised to accelerate with an infusion of capital. Everyday people ask me “when will the birth center be open” and the answer is “it depends if we are using GoFundMe or if powerful holders of capital will rematriate funds to save Black lives.”

I am the daughter and great-granddaughter of midwives. When I was 7 years old, and again when I 1as 9, my siblings were born at home. The experiences of their births gave me a strong narrative and worldview about pregnancy and birth because my first experience with birth was a safe and sacred process. In 2015, after over a decade working to address racial inequity in birth outcomes through governmental public health, I partnered with an elder midwife who first had a vision for opening Boston’s first birth center 30 years ago, to revive the idea. This time, we had more evidence of the safety, cost savings, and improved outcomes of birth centers. I gave birth twice at home myself, and I am driven to equitably bring to scale the kind of care that I had to pay out of pocket for. I spent the last 6 years writing the business plans, building a community around this vision, and in Jan of 2021, I could finally pay myself for half time and am now hiring staff. I am relentless in my quest for equity and I will not stop until pregnant people in Boston have a community birth center option.

For more than 30 years, Boston midwives and public health leaders have dreamed about a birth center Today, catalyzed by community demand and backed by evidence of safety and cost savings, plans for Boston’s first birth center are moving forward. Neighborhood Birth Center is the community’s response to improving birth outcomes and advancing health equity. A circle of public health practitioners and healthcare providers, we have a sound business plan and strategies to operationalize equity in everything from fundraising, to contracting, to governance and staffing, to patient care. We have established the necessary partnerships, have amassed a powerful team of renowned advisors, and are part of a national network of birth center leaders of color. For $2.6M dollars, a state-of-the-art maternity care center will provide comprehensive healing-centered, high-touch midwifery care to hundreds of families each year filling a significant gap in maternity care options for the Greater Boston Area. At its core, NBC is about Black women leading the an intersectional response to the maternal health crisis and building the infrastructure and systems to save our own lives in childbirth.

There are 399 birth centers in 40 states and DC. Yet, less than 4% are led by people of color. This is because most birth centers are started by midwives with an existing practice and financed using personal savings and lines of credit. Because of policies that racially redlined midwifery education and licensure, 95% of US midwives are white and the racial wealth divide means that they are more likely than people of color to have access to the capital needed to launch. We are building a new model for community birth centers - NBC is a non profit, led by community and specifically Black, brown, queer, trans, poor, and disabled people. We are planning our spa-like birthing place co-located with artists, activists, and healers in a renovated transit-oriented green building designed for maximum community benefit. In this way, the birth center birth center serves as a community hub, providing a space for healing and organizing. There is increased demand for out-of-hospital birth and a growing number of birth centers in the US in the last decade and NBC is proving to be a sought after model for the next generation of birth centers.

Alice Walker said “How we come into this world, how we are ushered in, met, hopefully embraced upon our arrival, impacts the whole of our time on this Earth.” The conditions of our birth matter for public health, the healthcare system, our economy, and even for our climate. Yet, The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among economically advantaged countries. Data show it’s not working well for wealthy, educated, white, cisgender women, and it is horrifying for Black people and other marginalized people. The World Health Organization is explicit that expanded access to midwifery and birth centers are part of the solution and the US has not reconciled our history of intentionally decimating midwifery in the 19th and 20th centuries nor made an investment to reintegrate the practice. NBC has the potential to not only transform the outcomes and experiences for birthing people in Boston, but we are part of a movement to reclaim midwifery and scaling this model can have a huge impact on humanity for generations.