The last few months have left me deeply inspired and hopeful about the work I’m doing in maternal health. I’m Tylar Williams, IWES Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Program Manager and a member of the Research and Evaluation Team, and in this blog I’ll take you on a journey of new connections, inspiring stories, helpful insights, and, of course, advocacy! To start, let’s go back to April, where I’ll recap a very memorable trip to Oakland.

Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP)

This year I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs’ (AMCHP) annual conference in Oakland, CA. The theme of this year’s convening was Partnering with Purpose, and that sentiment was evident from even before the conference began! We started the week off with a pre-conference convening with members of the Safer Childbirth Cities initiative that we have been a part of since 2019. It was a great opportunity to learn from others about the work they’re doing to improve maternal health outcomes, and we were able to spend quite a bit of time focusing on how to make this work sustainable. This theme would also remain present throughout the remainder of the conference.

There were so many great presentations I attended, but the two that left me most inspired were the opening plenary: Youth Partnering with Purpose: Movement Towards Liberation and a presentation on The Abundant Birth Project, the first pregnancy income supplement program in the US. The opening plenary was led by EYE For Prevention Youth Leaders and local Youth Leaders in Oakland who shared their experiences through poetry and performance. I left the session inspired and reflective about the work we do with youth here at IWES. It’s so important to uplift youth voices and involve them fully as thought partners; the future is looking mighty bright! The other session that inspired me the most was about The Abundant Birth Project, which provides unconditional cash supplements to Black and Pacific Islander mothers as a strategy to reduce preterm birth and improve economic outcomes. This project was piloted in San Francisco and recently expanded across the state of California. During this conversation they shared about how crucial it is to address racism as a root cause for many of the health inequities that Black mothers and mothers of color experience. I’m excited to see how this project works across the state and hopeful that it can be a guide for other states to follow in the future. 

“It’s so important to uplift youth voices and involve them fully as thought partners. The future is looking mighty bright!”

— Tylar Williams

You Deserve a Doula campaign

Before attending the conference I was very busy working on another big initiative —supported by AMCHP — that we were finally ready to launch, our very own doula awareness campaign, You Deserve a Doula (or YDAD)! At the beginning of April we officially launched You Deserve A Doula with social media posts, a website, and billboards, with the goal of sharing information about the services doulas provide, how to access doulas, and a snapshot of the current landscape of maternal health policy and ways to get involved. We spent the whole month and nearly half of May sharing resources through our This Is Why accounts, and having meaningful conversations with partners. For the first time, IWES held two Instagram Lives to discuss the basics of doula care and field audience questions and talk about the current maternal health-related legislation that’s been proposed in Louisiana and how we as community members can get involved. We’d like to send a special shoutout to Nicole Deggins of Sista Midwife Productions and Frankie Robertson of The Amandla Group for joining me for these conversations. If you missed our Lives, fret not! You can still check them out on This Is Why’s Instagram page here. 

Now for some of you, the news of our campaign may not be new, because you may have even seen a few of our billboards around New Orleans. They were supposed to come down May 15…but sometimes billboards stay up longer so if you find one, take a photo or video and send us an email about it or share it online and tag us in a post! We’d love to know what you think, and which message(s) you preferred the most! Although we’re sad to say that our campaign has ended, you can still learn more about doulas on the You Deserve A Doula website, and we have another big surprise to announce; WE MADE A PODCAST! As a little lagniappe to supplement the campaign, we spoke to four women that have either birthed with a doula or provide doula services to go even deeper and share more than what can fit in a social media post! We haven’t released the episodes yet, so stay tuned for an official announcement by making sure you’re signed up to our newsletter or following This Is Why. All in all, we’re so proud of this campaign and everything we were able to share, and we truly hope that you all enjoyed interacting with it and were able to learn something new that could benefit you, your family, and our community as a whole! 

Black Maternal Health Advocacy Day (BMHAD)

Lastly, I’ve hinted at it a few times already in this blog, but there’s a lot going on in the policy and advocacy world for Maternal and Child Health in Louisiana. There were many maternal health bills presented in the 2024 Louisiana Legislative session and myself and many other colleagues, partners, and MCH supporters participated in another amazing Black Maternal Health Advocacy Day (BMHAD). The day began with a virtual town hall where we learned about the state of maternal health in Louisiana and heard from some of our state lawmakers about the maternal health bills they are sponsoring. There are five bills* this session focused on MCH, ranging from bills that would support Medicaid reimbursement for doula services to coverage for nutrition counseling and lactation consultant services.

Following the town hall, we made our way to the state Capitol for a press conference on the Capitol steps. There were eight speakers, and I’m very proud to share that I had the privilege of being in that number and closing out the press conference by telling folks where to check out all of the MCH and reproductive justice bills, and encouraging them to continue advocating for Black and Brown birthing families. It was also amazing to see that each year the number of us present on the Capitol steps keeps growing and growing, and it was encouraging to just how many people support this work. If you couldn’t make it this year, it’s OK, we hope to see you there in 2025!

*If you’re interested in learning more about the bills, make sure to check out our Live with Frankie Robertson (linked above), or check out this page from our You Deserve a Doula campaign.

Overall, the past few months have been a wonderful exercise in making meaningful connections. Being intentional about the partnerships we form as we’re working to improve maternal health is so important, and I’m looking forward to what the remainder of the year has to offer.

Blog post written by Tylar Williams, MPH, CHES; IWES MCH Program Manager.