FIU receives $2.45 million federal grant to address disparities related to deaths of Black women from pregnancy-related causes | FIU News

The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) has awarded a five-year $2.45 million grant to FIU’s Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (CWGS) to further the work of its Black Mothers Care Plan.

In recent decades, the U.S. maternal mortality rate, among the highest of any developed nation, has had major disparities – Black women are more than three times as likely as white women to die from pregnancy-related causes.

The Black Mothers Care Plan aims to address this issue by building the capacity of minority-serving institutions, such as FIU, to conduct research on disparities in maternal mortality, morbidity and health outcomes, in addition to finding community-based solutions.

The grant designates FIU and the Black Mothers Care Plan as one of 16 research centers in a newly organized national Maternal Health Research Collaborative for Minority-Serving Institutions. The Maternal Health Research funding from HRSA will allow FIU researchers and community-based partners to collaboratively investigate how mobile and household-centered doula and midwifery care impacts black maternal health outcomes and experiences. The study seeks to understand and evaluate these care models in order to produce action-oriented data and best practices for maternal service and perinatal education delivery in Miami-Dade County.

The project is being conducted in collaboration with FIU’s Green Family Foundation NeighborhoodHELP, Magnolia Birth House, Metro Mommy Agency, Southern Birth Justice Network, and Behavioral Science Research Institute.

FIU’s efforts will be led by principal investigator Okezi Otovo, associate professor of history and African and African Diaspora Studies and affiliate faculty of the CWGS, along with co-principal investigators Alexandra Cornelius, associate teaching professor and director of the CWGS; Rokeshia Ashley, assistant professor of communication, and Frank Anderson, professor of humanities, health, and society in the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, whose specialty is obstetrics and gynecology.

“There’s lots of research about community care models and why they help to improve health outcomes for mothers and babies,” Otovo said. “There are fewer community care studies that look directly at the populations that are most at risk of maternal mortality and morbidity in the U.S., which in our country are Black and indigenous mothers.”

The project adds a new dimension to existing research: to assess the impact of a mobile and household-centered care model to improve health outcomes. That approach has been successfully deployed by FIU’s innovative NeighborhoodHELP program, which overcomes access barriers and connects people to the health system through mobile health clinics and household-centered care.

“This project will allow us to look at Miami-Dade County community-based care models to measure what it is about community-based models that leads to better outcomes and the lessons that this kind of model in Miami can provide nationally,” Otovo said.

In 2021, The Children’s Trust awarded a five-year, $1.37 million grant to CWGS to launch the Black Mothers Care Plan, which aimed to combat racial bias in maternal health by bringing together medical practitioners, medical students, midwives, doulas and women who have gone through maternal crises to address gaps in communication between the patient and the health care provider.

“CWGS is proud to serve as the meeting ground where physicians, scholars, midwives, doulas, and community-based health providers may come together to share their expertise in a collective effort to provide evidence-based solutions that lead to improved birthing outcomes for Black women,” said Cornelius, director of CWGS.

Otovo added: “We’re hopeful that these studies will assist those looking for evidence to understand the impact of these care models when developing policies. It is important to understand why community-based care and a mobile care delivery system can be so impactful.”