Both in Indiana and nationally, Black infants and pregnant people continue to die at the highest rate. A community organization is expanding a program to Indiana meant to address those significant health disparities.
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield reached out to Dear Fathers to bring the “Dads to Doulas” program to Indiana — which provides doula-level education to equip fathers with what they need to support their partners through pregnancy, childbirth and early infancy.
Kyra Betts is trained to provide support, education and advocacy for clients before, during and after childbirth as a doula.
She designed the program after helping her long-time friend, Brad Edwards, build his knowledge around maternal health. Betts said from there, they realized they could expand that education to other Black men and fathers.
“It was actually a really unique opportunity to sit back and think about what was needed to create something like this,” Betts said. “What it would have to say, what it would have to do, some of the cultural nuances that exist, and be able to put all of that together.”
Edwards is Black father himself and serves as the director of community engagement and program strategy for Dear Fathers. He said the people who participate understand and appreciate that this is a space created by a Black woman to capture the cultural context that’s critical in health.
“It means everything,” Edwards said. “It just continues to affirm that if you create these spaces for Black men, Black fathers, to show up and be a positive impact for the community, that they would do that. They would do it at a high level, and that's what we've seen.”
Edwards said the program gives Black men and fathers the ability to play a role in supporting their community, especially when it comes to infant and maternal health.
Betts said the training is specifically designed around evidence and medicine that keeps people safe.
The six-week training covers the physiological and emotional aspects of pregnancy and childbirth, postpartum care and infant wellness and emotional support during childbirth. It also includes advocacy strategies in health care settings, as well as the history and impact of systemic racism on health outcomes.
There are two in-person workshops — one in Lake County that begins on July 19 and one in Marion County that begins on Aug. 23. A virtual workshop will begin in September.
As she designed the program, Betts said she wanted to connect Black communities to education that could save lives, but she said she wished this program didn’t have to exist.
“You do have to find a little bit of joy in obviously creating something that people wanted and want to be a part of. But what we are experiencing is awful,” Betts said. “What children, what babies are experiencing, is really awful.”
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Betts said she runs the program and people participate in the program because more and more people are becoming aware that the issue isn’t getting better. In fact, Betts said it’s getting worse.
“When we look at the areas in Indiana, in Missouri or in Illinois, or any state across this country, and you look at the highest infant and maternal mortality rates, you see large communities of Black families,” Betts said. “Large communities of Black families at any range of any socioeconomic status.”
Betts said education and income aren’t “protective factors for Black women and children” when it comes to infant and maternal mortality rates — which is why she said it’s important to not place blame on families.
“It is nothing that we've done wrong,” Betts said. “It is something that the system, as it was originally designed, is working in just the way that it was originally designed.”
Betts said it’s the result of centuries of systemic oppression that create the conditions that put the Black community at a higher risk of death or injury. She said a Black person is at an increased likelihood to live in a place “that has suffered environmental discrimination” and lack access to health foods and transportation. There’s also the issue of not having access to “culturally competent health care” and resources to learn information that could save themselves or the people in their communities.
“We don't learn enough about the reproductive system and about healthy pregnancies as women,” Betts said. “We aren't taught enough from a young age about our reproductive system and how all of those things lead to having healthy children. So if we don't learn enough as women, we know that men surely aren't learning anything.”
Edwards said Anthem reached out to Dear Fathers to bring the program to Indiana because of how prevalent infant and maternal mortality is in the state.
“Indiana's Black maternal mortality rate is just over two times the national average for black women,” Edwards said. “Thirty-seven out of 92 counties lack labor and delivery units. Like just think about that — 37 counties don't even have a space, a medical space, for these women to even have these babies.
Edwards said to people who don’t have access to a medical facility, they would benefit from having a doula. However, Medicaid covers 40 percent of live births in Indiana and doulas aren’t covered by the program. Edwards said leads to doulas being trained and then moving to more affluent areas to provide services.
“By training fathers, this information stays in the community and it spreads like wildfire,” Edwards said. “Which is what we've been seeing for the duration of us doing this program.”
Edwards said he’s seen people in the trainings who aren’t planning on having children but want the knowledge to support the other people in their lives. He also said he’s also seen several “community fathers” who work with and support younger Black people who could benefit from the knowledge or training.
Betts said this program can be part of the solution — but it can’t be the entire solution.
“In addition to programs like this, we have to look at how do we reroute and recreate the systems that exist within our communities so that they are able to better serve and better care for black communities
While it’s important to connect with communities — especially the communities that really need this support and knowledge — Betts said it won’t work on its own.
“We can do this all we want to, if we cannot get out of food deserts and get out of [brownfields] and get into places where we are able to exist healthy, we are generations away from resolving infant and maternal mortality,” Betts said.
Infant and maternal mortality within Black communities is significant because Betts said the community suffers when it loses pregnant people and babies.
“We lose out on the contributions and the love of those people,” Betts said. “But we also then are inundated with the grief of the reality of what's happening.”
Betts said between herself, Edwards and their co-facilitator who is a certified midwife, the organization becomes a resource for the people in the workshops and those around them — even if the people reaching out aren’t fathers.
Edwards said there is no cap on how many people can enroll in the workshops, but the organization does create cohorts of about 40 people to make sure everyone has the opportunity to learn and ask questions.
Abigail is our health reporter. Contact them at aruhman@wfyi.org or on Signal at IPBHealthRuhman.65.