RH Impact releases its Building Your Perinatal Team eBook During Launch Call with Providers, Partners, and Supporters!

The eBook and accompanying infographic were created to help educate mothers, birthing families, birthing people, healthcare stakeholders and communities about the healthcare workers who offer support before, during, and after having a baby. RH Impact’s goal in creating this project is to show diversity amongst perinatal care staff and care providers.

“When offered the opportunity to create educational content for community members, we were excited for the challenge to make something that was beautiful, accessible, and reflective of the diversity of birthing people, families, and healthcare providers in our communities. We are incredibly grateful for the community members, clinicians, practitioners, and community-based organizations that worked with us to create something that we hope will be useful for years to come.” – Aja Clark, Sr. Birth Equity Evaluation Analyst, RH Impact 

As part of the project RH Impact’s Training, Praxis, and Evaluation (TPE) Team conducted research to aid in the creation of descriptions and graphic representations for eleven maternal health care professions including: obstetricians/gynecologists, midwives, anesthesiologists, maternal and child health nurses, full spectrum doulas, lactation counselors, pelvic floor therapists, childbirth educators, perinatal mental health specialists, perinatologists, and pediatricians.  

“We recognize that all of the practitioners featured in the project might not be available to all families in the United States. There is a lot of work to be done to make support from practitioners like doulas, pelvic floor therapists, and even certain midwives accessible to all people,” Clark said.  

To accompany the Building Your Perinatal Care Team eBook, launch activities, RH Impact and CHCF hosted a special community partner virtual call to share the final version of the eBook and infographic with community partners and thank them for their participation in the project. 

“CHCF is proud to support this much-needed project, which is a visual reminder of the research showing that the maternity care workforce can provide better care by reflecting the diversity of the mothers and birthing people it serves,” said Amelia Cobb, senior program officer at CHCF. “Also, expanding the maternity care workforce beyond OB-GYNs and nurses is critical for advancing Black birth equity in California and nationwide.” 

The virtual call was attended by over 34 medical professionals, providers, birth workers, community-based organizations, and reproductive justice workers from across the nation, some of whom shared very positive comments about the eBook. In its first-weekend post-launch, the eBook was downloaded over 100 times and has been tapped as a training resource by hospital staff in Texas. Call attendees included staff from the following organizations: SHERO/MOMentum Park (Nebraska), Ben Taub Hospital, (Texas), Navajo Breastfeeding Coalition (Navajo Nation), Crescent City Family Services (Louisiana), MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center (Maryland), American Academy of Physicians (Missouri), The Birthee Network (California), University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Social Work, Johns Hopkins University, All Children (Florida), The Cuir Birthworker (Texas), Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation, T.L.C. Consulting & Maternal Healing (California), Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the California Health Care Foundation. 

“The project reflects the true diversity of our community which is rarely ever reflected in educational materials of any kind,” Clark said. “We’d like to, again, express our deepest gratitude to the California Health Care Foundation, our community partners Crescent City Family Services (New Orleans, LA), T.L.C. Consulting & Maternal Healing (Oakland, CA), Jamaa Birth Village (Ferguson, MO), Village Birth International (Syracuse, NY), Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center (Atlanta, GA), and Birth in Color RVA (Richmond, VA), practitioners, clinicians, and community members who made time to co-create this project with us. Please share the project widely!” 

Click to download the Building Your Perinatal Team. To learn more about RH Impact and the work we do visit our website www.rhimpact.org.