Building Relationships and Tackling Racism to Support Mothers and Babies

CHIP's involvement in tackling infant mortality continues in Buncombe County, mostly in the partnership and support it provides to Mothering Asheville (previously known as the Community Centered Health Home), a cross-sector collaborative advocating for institutional policies that address structural racism, implicit bias, access to care, and economic and other social factors. If you want to learn more, please review the Mothering Asheville Implementation Plan, which will also be housed on the Resources & Links tab of this blog.

The next Mothering Asheville Steering Committee Meeting is August 10^th from 1:30 -3:00 PM

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CHIP is supporting Mothering Asheville's work mostly "behind the scenes" by making sure they and their partners have access to data that can inform their work and helping work out systems for referring to the Sistas Caring for Sistas doula services and integrating those services more fully into MAHEC OB. CHIP is also working to amplify the central message of Mothering Asheville--racism is killing babies in our community and across the country. Yes, racism. Research is clearer every day that the disparities in birth outcomes and infant mortality between blacks and whites cannot just be attributed to economics or education levels or access to health care. Even when all those things are equal, African-American women and infants fare worse than their white counterparts. And women who report higher levels of racial discrimination have worse birth outcomes. Read this excellent article from the New York Times Magazine about race and infant mortality to take a deep dive into this topic.


Recent Mothering Asheville Highlights Include:

• SistasCaring4Sistas traveled to the DONA International Summit in Fort, Lauderdale Florida to continue professional development as trained doulas, connect with doulas across the country, and learn more about how to develop their work. Nikita Smart and Chama Woydak presented at the conference. 
• SistasCaring4Sistas has contracted Michele Ashly of Couer Consience Consulting to provide ongoing professional development, organizational development, and sustainability building. 
• SistasCaring4Sistas at MAHEC has hired two additional Community Based Doulas! Please welcome Chaka Gordon and Latisha Collington!
• Mother to Mother is planning a community engagement event in partnership with Father’s Touch called Back to School Bash on the afternoon of August 25th (more details to follow)
• You can also check out the recent media articles about their work, including the work of Sistas Caring 4 Sistas doula program, here and here. However, please note these corrections/ clarifications from Maggie Adams, Project Manager of Mothering Asheville, who wants to make sure this innovative work is represented accurately:
• Mothering Asheville is a community led collaboration that has existed for over three years and is led by community members, community partner organizations, and healthcare providers. Partners include: Community Residents, Pisgal Legal Services, Children First/CIS, the YWCA of Asheville, Buncombe County Health and Human Services, ABIPA, NC Center for Health and Wellness, Homegrown Babies, Nurse Family Partnership, CHIP, Mission Hospital to name a few. The grant vision, goals, and objectives were written as a collective over a 6 month period. 
• Mothering Asheville is based off a model designed by the Prevention Institute called the Community Centered Health Home
• For the first year and a half the initiative was focused on building relationships; mainly through a group called Mother to Mother where community residents and community organizations met monthly. 
• Out of an event planned by the members of Mother to Mother, the community residents represented in Mother to Mother , after meeting and learning from Chama at Homegrown Babies about what doulas were; decided on that doulas would be a great way to help women with the support needed during pregnancy in birth.
• After being trained as doulas, the core four, decided to develop SistasCaring4Sistas
• As a way to be able to support SC4S in being compensated to work with women that might not normally have access to doula care, the doulas were onboarded as MAHEC employees.
• Amanda and I are not working to address disparities by ourselves, we are only supporting and providing resources ALONGSIDE our partners from what Mother to Mother and SC4S and the Mothering Asheville Steering Committee have led the charge on.
• We have been on an uphill battle to address many of the institutional policies that prevent women from having healthy pregnancies and it has not been easy and it is hard for healthcare providers to stomach the idea of institutional racism as the reason for health INEQUITIES.
• Mothering Asheville is not just a community based doula program . SC4S is a community based doula organization
• Mothering Asheville is a movement that believes that we have to make a clinical shift to address how care is given, community capacity has to be the core focus of the movement, and we have to address policies that are in place that are built off the white supremacy culture that we live in.