Black Women and Out of Hospital Births
The Black Women and Out of Hospital Births project began in Fall 2016 when then undergraduate student Camaya Miller expressed interest in learning more about alternative births among Black women. Camaya collected 5 qualitative interviews before graduating and pursuing her MPH degree. She gifted the project to Dr. Stephanie Baker to complete, who secured funding and collected 25 additional interviews during Summer 2018. A total of 30 phone interviews with Black women and birthing people who had home births or birthing center births were collected, transcribed and analyzed. In Spring 2021, Assistant Professor of Dance, Keshia Wall, agreed to collaborate on a documentary-dance film project that was based on major themes from the interviews. The purpose of this film collaboration was to highlight both the challenges of Black maternal health particularly within hospital and healthcare systems, and to also uplift the ways that Black birthing people have reclaimed their power and made decisions to birth in the ways most meaningful to them.
Latinx Reproductive Health in Alamance County—Deena Elrefai and Dr. Stephanie Baker
The U.S.-Latinx community faces barriers towards reproductive health in the United States. Reproductive health care is instrumental in healthy birth outcomes. In a study of births to Mexican-American women, infant mortality was 2.5 times greater among women who did not receive prenatal care. This study uses a qualitative methodological approach and collects data through focus groups from subsets within the Alamance County Latinx community in order to better understand differences of reproductive healthcare experiences. Researchers worked in collaboration with a local community advisory board made up of stakeholders within the local Latinx community, health care providers, university faculty, and local activists to support the research. Focus groups centered on a variety of reproductive health interactions and occurrences including patient/provider communication, fetal health, and fetal death. Results were analyzed using the Sort, Sift, Think, and Shift method developed by research talk, and several themes were identified.
Findings fit under six key themes: 1) diverse backgrounds and experiences impact the amount of religious shame and stigma associated with accessing reproductive health resources; 2) negative health experiences are intergenerational; 3) negative stereotypes and assumptions from providers can impact engagement; 4) assumptions about the availability of community resources can affect engagement; 5) participants experienced varying levels of anxiety about communicating with family members about reproductive health topics; and 6) gender norms and stereotypes impacted engagement with healthcare services.
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Data Justice: MENA Women, Preterm Birth, and Discrimination—Naz Shokri and Dr. Yanica Faustin
Exploring the adverse birthing outcomes of Middle Eastern & North African (MENA) birthing populations can help to influence the way we collect data and our understanding of the maternal health status of this migrant population. This project will use a concurrent mixed methods design, to analyze vital records data and semi-structured interview data to examine and explore the birth outcomes of MENA birthing persons and their identity formation and discriminatory experiences as they navigate this society and pregnancy, labor and delivery. This study could potentially influence practice and demonstrate the need to change the way we collect data for populations outside of the typical racial categories that have been socially constructed. The lack of literature and erasure of this population who is at risk of experiencing discrimination which we know can negatively influence maternal health outcomes makes this study a vital contribution to the fields of migrant health, maternal health, and health disparities.
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UMOMMI
Coming soon!