April 11-17, 2021 is Black Maternal Health Week. BMHW was started in 2018 by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance. This weeklong event is centered around awareness, activism, and community building.
Next month marks the sixth annual Black Breastfeeding Week, observed the last week of August. It’s an effort to raise awareness and highlight this disparity.
A baby shower is a celebrated tradition for moms-to-be. But for lower-income expectant mothers in our community, it's something they may not get the chance to experience. One Charlotte organization is changing that, one woman at a time.
Charlotte Doula Kira Kimble has had a lot of inquiries over the past month. She reached out to WBTV's Brigida Mack to say her special series on Black Maternal Health last month caused a spike in interest in her business, TJACK Doula.
Success stories where black mothers got the care they needed - and deserved, without implicit or explicit racial bias playing a role. Aneka Jackson of Charlotte is one of them.
While the history of racial bias in medicine dates back more than a century in the U.S., it’s only recently begun to be seen as a contributing factor to why the black maternal mortality rate is three to four times higher than that of white women.
Of the hundreds of doulas in Charlotte, only five to ten percent of them are Black. But as experts see a rise in the number of Black doulas across the country – could it help save more black mothers?
As we continue our special look at black maternal health during the national Black Maternal Health week, we recognized through poring over pages of research and talking to black mothers, birth advocates and doctors that there are areas of concern.
By comparison, black women are 22 percent more likely to die from heart disease, 71 percent more likely to perish from cervical cancer and a whopping 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes than white women.
