Black Birthworker Connect

I Be Black Girl’s innovative solution will chip away  at the Black Maternal Health crisis by creating a software platform that utilizes inputs from pregnant people and community birthworkers and can be shared with traditional medical care teams, to provide a comprehensive approach to reproductive wellbeing. I Be Black Girl (IBBG) has already scaled our Catalyst business entrepreneurship programming alongside our Doula Passage Program training, pairing the two to invest in the businesses and leadership of Black women entrepreneurs who seek to become community-based birthworkers and doulas. Through building technologies and platforms which will allow community-based birthworkers to capture data from their clients and for their clients to enter information about themselves that can be shared with their entire care team, we are able to interrupt the oppressive nature of the medical system which gatekeeps this very information, extending the bench of care providers who can appropriately support Black pregnant people and putting decision making and choice back in the hands of Black birthing people. Through building innovative technologies for Black community-based birthworkers and their clients, we can meaningfully transform the face of Black Maternal Health and build real solutions, dictated by the very people we serve. 

In merging our Catalyst business entrepreneurship programming and our Doula Passage Program, we have been able to scale our investment in Black community-based birthworkers and their businesses and livelihood, while at the same time scaling our community’s ability to provide for the needs of Black pregnant people. We have leveraged various technologies throughout this process, such as the Thinkirific learning platform we use to disseminate training modules to entrepreneurs in the program. However, what we are missing and what is needed is one central platform for birthworkers to be able to better track the outcomes of their clients and to share those outcomes in a safe manner with other members of the care team. This will better inform care teams not only of the ways they can provide robust, affirming care to individual pregnant clients, but also ways to address the Black Maternal Health crisis at large by allowing other key trusted partners into the care process. 

Currently there are only systems such as this for traditional health providers to track patient health information and outcomes. Within the traditional medical system, care teams for pregnant people typically include OB/GYNs and adjacent medical providers for any high-risk needs; as these providers are typically all in one hospital setting, they have access to each other’s information and have the opportunity to provide linkage to care for the additional resources their pregnant patients need. However, traditional medical systems and those trained within it, have deeply racist, anti-Black, misogynist biases and beliefs which get in the way of Black pregnant patients getting the comprehensive care they need. By investing in community-based Black birthworkers and building specific technologies which support them in providing affirming, culturally relevant care, we can build care systems outside of the traditional western medical system which actually have the opportunity and ability to change the realities around Black Maternal Health. 

Community-based birthworkers and doulas can change the trajectory for Black women and pregnant people throughout their pregnancy and birth journeys. But, there is currently no way for doulas to track and share their clients’ outcomes. Having this ability would change our community’s ability to support Black pregnant people in meaningful and specific ways, and allow us to build transformational solutions to Black Maternal Health which can be replicated in other geographies across the Heartland and beyond. Initially this innovative technology would be used throughout IBBG programming, allowing birthworkers trained through our programming to leverage this technology for those they serve; this will begin as a web based software which could eventually become an app. We would then be able to test, make adjustments, and replicate for other community-based birthworkers beyond IBBG’s programming who want to utilize the technology to better serve their clients. 

IBBG is based in Nebraska and serves the over 40,000 Black women, femmes, and girls who live across our state. We know that through centering the autonomy, liberation, and leadership of Black women, femmes, and girls, we can support our members in accessing abundance for their lives and their families. We understand that through centering those most impacted, we can positively shift pregnancy and birth experiences and outcomes for all people. 

Nebraska has shockingly high rates of overall maternal mortality (28.2 compared to the national 20.4), and ranks second-highest in the US for maternity care deserts. In Douglas County, the most populated county in the state, the Black infant mortality rate is 12.7 compared to the white infant mortality rate at 4.2 (overall 5.5). Rural regions of the state accounted for roughly 40% of births from 2016-2018, yet 66 of the state’s 93 counties have no hospitals providing obstetric care, no birth centers, no OB/GYNs, and no certified nurse midwives; and since 2017, the state has lost six birthing units in rural hospitals.

Our solution addresses these horrifying maternal health realities in Nebraska, especially given the maternity care desert of our state. We train community-based birthworkers in geographies across Nebraska that do not have accessible maternal healthcare, and our innovative technology will allow these community birthworkers and their patients to track and document their birth journey. Through evaluating the health information tracked through this technology, we will be able to share our findings with our community and providers about the ways health professionals can better support Black pregnant people throughout their pregnancy and birth journeys, beginning in Nebraska and scaling our impact throughout the Heartland.

IBBG’s innovative technology addresses both Business Development & Procurement and Employee Advancement. Through training and supporting Black women and femme entrepreneurs who want to become community-based birthworkers, we are able to invest in the business development of Black women run businesses as well as invest in their skills and knowledge development around birth work and birth practices. The Black women and femmes we support in building their businesses often go on to support others in our community in securing employment, building continual pathways for connection with new community-based birthworkers and strengthening our network of Black birthworkers and doulas in Nebraska. 

Our Birth Justice theory of action addresses the lack of access to quality and culturally relevant maternal health services for Black people, through programming that expands the Black birth worker workforce and capacity to support families, challenging the traditional healthcare system to transform approaches to reproductive care, and influencing change through intentional policy and advocacy. The program’s theory of change outputs include: number of full-spectrum doulas trained, number of clients accessing healthcare through partners, a significant decrease in occurrences of maternal morbidity, distribution of a white paper to healthcare facilities across the Heartland, and development of a shared state-wide plan to address adverse outcomes and disparities in maternal health. 

The innovative technology we will be able to build through this investment will result in meaningful change in linkage to care and resources for Black pregnant people served through community-based birthworkers. Through this technology, Black pregnant people will receive the robust, affirming pregnancy and birth support they deserve through birthworkers and doulas, who will be able to track health information and outcomes which will impact Black Maternal Health at large in our state and beyond, allowing us to build new innovative solutions. 

The Catalyst program started out as a one-day summit and evolved to a comprehensive learning program that we have now merged with our Doula Passage Program. IBBG’s Catalyst began with a cohort of 5 entrepreneurs in our inaugural 2021-2022 cohort, from which we gained many insights which led to the coupling of our Catalyst and Doula Passage Program, wherein the inaugural class of the Catalyst/Doula Passage Program has trained 38 doulas thus far in 2023. We will host additional cohorts this year to support 37 additional entrepreneurs, for a total of 75 Black women and femme entrepreneurs supported in 2023. We anticipate scaling our abilities to support additional community-based birthworkers over the next several years, though for now we anticipate training and supporting 75 community-based birthworkers in a given year. 

IBBG serves and centers the 40,000+ Black women, femmes, and girls who live in Nebraska. Black women, femmes, and girls are uniquely impacted by every system of oppression, and as such, are uniquely positioned to create real, transformational solutions to the problems which plague our communities. IBBG programming inherently invests in quality of life for Black women, femmes, and girls by achieving liberation to ensure their sustained autonomy, wellness, and livelihood. Additionally, IBBG partners with cross-sector stakeholders to develop, implement, and scale our programming in Nebraska and the Heartland. 

IBBG is a collective that leads with boldness, innovation, and inspiration, actively creating a culture of radical change-making that centers and employs the leadership of Black women, femmes, and girls. We know that we cannot do the work we want to do on behalf of our community if internally IBBG does not reflect the many lived experiences of Black womanhood, and we are proud of the many ways Black women leadership and experiences are centered and uplifted in everything we do.

IBBG centers those most directly impacted, as we center the needs and leadership of Black women, femmes, and girls. IBBG has been built by Black women, femmes, and girls, and remains deeply embedded within our community  to have an intimate understanding and appropriate pulse on our community’s needs. We engage community members in a variety of ways, including research opportunities, feedback surveys, town halls, and summits and convenings.

Despite the pay equity gap, Black women launch new businesses more often than any other group in the nation. From 2002-2012, the number of businesses owned by Black women increased 179%, compared to 52% for all women-owned businesses and 20% for all businesses. Even though Black women business owners are the fastest growing entrepreneur segment, many Black women business owners lack access to culturally relevant business services, have difficulty accessing credit, and face capital constraints. Since Black women in Nebraska are disproportionately impacted by inequity in entrepreneurship and the workforce, IBBG understands that it is critical for us to provide intentional resources to Black women founders. We know that supporting Black women business owners adds to local economic growth, creates vibrant and sustainable communities, provides success for economically challenged communities, and combats talent loss and brain drain. 

IBBG’s innovative technology will impact the lives of community-based birthworkers and create pathways to economic liberation at the same time that it impacts Black Maternal Health outcomes. By fostering financial freedom for Black birthworkers, we are impacting entire Black families and creating transformational solutions which truly meet community needs, and doing so through centering the leadership and experiences of those most impacted. This investment will allow us to build towards positive Black Maternal Health outcomes for Black pregnant people and their babies through leveraging technologies that also invest in the economic freedom of Black birthworkers. While this work will incubate in Nebraska, we look forward to replicating it across the Heartland region.

IBBG hopes to be in partnership with the Truist Foundation and MIT Solve so that we may have the intentional time, resources, coaching, and investment to strategize around and implement this work. Additionally, the access to developing relationships within new networks and communities and practice will allow us to lean on connections to elevate and scale our work. 

IBBG would love to partner with MIT Solve and the Truist Foundation because of the many ways this initiative is renowned for supporting their grantees’ solutions in big ways. We would welcome all technical assistance and support around Branding, Evaluation, and Technology as we build and scale this initiative. We have previously contracted with a local marketing agency to manage our branding, but as our team has expanded, we have been able to hire a full-time staff person who manages our communications - This team member, and our full team, would benefit from technical assistance in marketing and branding. Additionally, our team is always seeking to learn and grow in the area of program evaluation, and we would love support as we monitor and evaluate this program and its impact and growth. As we develop this technology, IBBG would greatly appreciate support around this web based software, as we simply do not have these skills in-house and would love the opportunity to develop such skills to ensure we can maintain and scale this innovative technology.