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accessHealthNews.net
June 2025
Volume 11 | Issue No. 97
Mary Beth Taranow, a retired operating room nurse
"During the midst of my training to
become a doula and a lactation
educator, I started learning about birth
work in general, how it wasn't this field
of work that upper-middle-class white
women use to bring their babies into the
world. I learned that it was something that
we have been doing since we came from
the continent. Knowing that lineage that's
been passed down from birth worker to
birth worker, it started to feel like a cultural
responsibility."
These words from William Moore, CPE,
a doula and race and health equity
administrator, kicked off a webinar
hosted by the Black Women's Health
Imperative (BWHI). Moore, William Rowe,
MS, a lactation educator with BWHI,
and Mohamed Kamara, MBA, CEO of
InovCares.com, spoke about the role of
Black men in reproductive justice and birth
equity. Together, the speakers shared their
experiences as professionals and as family
members participating in the process of
childbirth.
Rowe's story of becoming part of the
movement to end the Black maternal
mortality gap began with a college course
in maternal and infant nutrition. The course
revealed glaring disparities in the data
surrounding maternal and infant health
outcomes. "I only saw that, even in the
imagery and the context and the studies,
everything was around white women,"
Rowe said. "The little knowledge that was
available on Black birthing women and
birthing people, it was all around how they
are 'missing the mark.'"
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"My sister was delivering her fourth child in Sierra Leone
when she suddenly passed on. It was a hemorrhage. Rushed
to the hospital, bleeding profusely. They couldn't stop the
bleeding. That led to her death."
- Mohamed Kamara,
MBA, CEO of InovCares.com
