Rochester, N.Y. (WHAM)— The Black Doula Collaborative is working to improve maternal health and birth outcomes for Black women in Rochester.
Program manager Jasmine Brewer leads discussion at a weekly meeting for the Black Doula Collaborative in Rochester, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Rochester, N.Y. — The Black Doula Collaborative is working to improve maternal health and birth outcomes for Black women in Rochester.
"A doula is basically a support person," said Jasmine Brewer, the manager of the program. "They're there to support you during that laboring process, emotionally, physically."Leaders at local resource center Healthy Baby Network started the group in 2019 after troubling data about pregnant Black women and their deliveries. Since then, Black doulas from Rochester have met at the Network's location inside the Strong-Todd House on East Avenue to get trained over 12 weeks. "Part of having a doula is making sure that we have better birth outcomes in our community," said Brewer.According to the CDC, the maternal mortality rate was just above 50 deaths per 100,000 live births for Black women in 2023, which was more than any other racial group. "Sometimes, a lot of people come into the hospital with fear, some people come into the hospital with fear because they don't know, 'Am I going to leave?," said community-based doula Ayanah Alexander. "Are we going to leave here safe? Are we going to leave here as a whole family unit the way we came in?'""I, in 1994, had a baby who was born very early, very small, and who was transferred from the hospital that she was delivered in to another hospital to be in the NICU — a neonatal intensive care unit — for the first five days of her life without me," said Healthy Baby Network CEO Sherita Bullock. "I was heartbroken. I didn’t understand what had happened. I didn’t understand why my pregnancy was different and it would be years later until after I came to the Network and began to learn about infant mortality and the causes and drivers that I found my own story.""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 said.For doulas a part of the current cohort, this is a responsibility they take pride in. "It feels like I'm a superhero a little bit," Alexander said. "I'm helping save people that look just like me. Someone was there to help me out, and I want to spread that."
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