The Rochester Black Doula Collaborative aims to enhance birth outcomes and maternal health

Rochester, New York – Black women’s birth outcomes and maternal health are being improved in Rochester by the Black Doula Collaborative.

“A doula is basically a support person,” program manager Jasmine Brewer stated. “They’re there to support you during that laboring process, emotionally, physically.”

The organization was founded in 2019 by leaders of the local resource center Healthy Baby Network in response to alarming statistics regarding Black pregnant women and their deliveries.

Since then, the Network has held 12-week training sessions for Black doulas from Rochester at its location inside the Strong-Todd House on East Avenue.

“Part of having a doula is making sure that we have better birth outcomes in our community,” Brewer said.

Disparities in birth outcomes are still evident in the most recent national data.

Black women had the highest maternal mortality rate of any racial group in 2023, with slightly over 50 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the CDC.

Ayanah Alexander, a community-based doula, stated, “There are times when a lot of people enter the hospital in fear. Some people enter the hospital in fear because they are unsure of whether they will leave.” “Will we get out of here safely? Will our entire family depart in the same manner as we arrived?

Black women are also more likely to experience preterm labor during pregnancy.

“I, in 1994, had a baby who was born very early, very small, and who was transferred from the hospital that she was delivered into another hospital to be in the NICU — a neonatal intensive care unit — for the first five days of her life without me,” said Sherita Bullock, CEO of the Healthy Baby Network. “I was devastated. I couldn’t comprehend what had transpired. I didn’t know why my pregnancy was different, and I wouldn’t discover my own story until years later when I joined the Network and started learning about infant mortality and its causes and factors.”

Bullock wants to assist families in overcoming this. “We worked with a local foundation to train women from the community who are Black to become doulas and to work with other Black women and to provide services and care to them and to their families free of charge and that work has grown from then until now,” she explained.

The program has served more than 200 families and has 35 Black doulas.

This is a duty that doulas in the current generation take great pride in. Alexander remarked, “It feels like I’m a superhero a little bit,” “People who resemble me are being saved by me. I want to spread the word that someone was there to assist me.