CENTO MATERNITY
CENTO MATERNITY
Cento accompanies expectant mothers through the perinatal process with agency-affirming listening that foregrounds (1) embodied experience, (2) personal narrative, and (3) the will to manifest new ways of being.
Leveraging AI listening, Cento will relay these conversations to the healthcare system, inviting person-centered care through the poetry of human suffering and flourishing.
When an expectant mother seeks care, her doctor foregrounds disease, checking lab tests and clinical findings to inform a prescription or procedure. The system pays little attention to the seeker’s own observations and concerns: what meaning to make of new bodily sensations; how to choose between a hospital birth or a birthing center; how to organize childcare postpartum. The system overlooks opportunities to integrate the mother’s wisdom in decision-making. It not only diminishes her agency, it also erodes trust in the system. The problem is especially acute for marginalized communities, where distrust contributes to delayed care-seeking and poor outcomes.
To affirm agency in the health system, Cento listens to, accompanies, and equips seekers.
The theory of change is that listening, accompanying, and equipping seekers will (1) increase the seeker’s self-insight and agency, (2) improve the system’s capacity to manifest seekers’ agency, (3) generate better health and societal outcomes.
LISTEN. The prevailing model is to listen only for facts relevant to treatment. In contrast, Cento employs a therapeutic listening model that illuminates the seeker’s embodied experience and her process of meaning-making. This brings forth observations from the seeker that are impactful to the seeker herself, to healthcare providers, and to the system. Enabled by foundation models (FM), Cento efficiently scales the system’s capacity for therapeutic listening.
ACCOMPANY. A resurgent movement for community-based accompaniment seeks to overcome power and information asymmetries that deter seekers from manifesting their agency in the system. Cento Accompagnateurs establish rapport with both seekers and healthcare providers. They promote mutual understanding and develop a common course of action. Cento affordably scales this by accompanying seekers in groups.
EQUIP. Even when a seeker knows what she needs, the system’s rigidity thwarts the seeker’s agency. To effect change in this system, Cento equips seekers and providers with artifacts that help enact the seeker’s agency. Artifacts distill and reconfigure insights from listening and accompaniment. For an expectant mother, this artifact may be a brief but exquisitely personalized birth plan, for example. Cento scales the production of artifacts by employing foundation models.