Community Based Doulas – Lavish to Essential Support

Project: Community Based Doulas

Community Based Doulas is an interdisciplinary team of two nurse midwives and two physicians in Buncombe County, North Carolina.

Ensuring healthy, equitable birth outcomes

As clinical practitioners providing safety-net obstetrical and well-woman healthcare to the women of Western North Carolina, we acknowledge structural and institutional racism as the root cause for inequities in maternal and infant mortality rates. Our project seeks to eliminate these infant and maternal mortality inequities in our region, across the state, and beyond by supporting Sistas Caring 4 Sistas (SC4S), an established community-based doula program. These community partners work to provide racially/ethnically/culturally concordant doula services free of charge to women of color during their prenatal, intrapartum, and postpartum periods.

Doula support for and from the community

Literature shows that doula support are more likely to have vaginal deliveries and shorter duration or labor; and less likely to have negative birth experiences, cesarean deliveries, instrument assisted deliveries, and lower 5 minute Apgar scores. However, doula services in our area have historically followed a fee-for-service model, affordable to and utilized by mostly upper middle class White families. SC4S strives to reduce infant and maternal mortality by dedicating themselves to provision of doula support to women of color to ensure healthy, equitable birth outcomes.