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VISION: Children birth through age 8, mothers, and birthing people are healthy and thrive in environments that support their health and well-being.
“Some kids don’t have healthcare access which can impact their future when they grow up.”
– 9th grader in Durham Public Schools
The system of people, institutions and resources that support family and child health. This system is supposed to help ensure that all children in Durham are healthy.
Learn more about the components of our maternal and child health system and the strengths, challenges and opportunities to improve it in the report below.
16. Anti-Racist Healthcare
16. Anti-Racist Healthcare
Create and implement approaches to culturally affirming, anti-racist maternal and child healthcare to reduce negative health outcomes for BIPOC (and especially Black) women, birthing people, and children.
Strategies
Strategies
The Recommendation: Create and implement approaches to culturally affirming, anti-racist maternal and child healthcare
The Strategies:
STRATEGY 16.1: Engage maternal and child healthcare facilities in quality improvement efforts to address racial and ethnic disparities in care and patient education.
STRATEGY 16.2: Improve training for providers to provide culturally competent and inclusive maternal and child healthcare and health education.
STRATEGY 16.3: Report data on maternal and infant outcomes by race and ethnicity in a timely manner. Support review of the causes behind every maternal and infant death.
Why this Recommendation is Important to Our Community
Why this Recommendation is Important to Our Community
Black women and birthing people and Black babies experience significant disparities in morbidity and mortality that are persistent and in some cases are expanding. Racism is the clear primary cause of the weathering that Black women and birthing people experience and that puts them and their babies at risk for negative health outcomes. Black women and birthing people with all incomes and education levels continue to report that they receive disparate treatment in medical settings. Solutions that create accountability for health care systems and providers and that create healthcare settings that are affirming of Black women and birthing people and their babies are needed.
Community Voices:
"Anti-racism training for doctors and resident students dealing with Medicaid patients." - Durham parent
"I didn't trust my pediatrician and was scared to switch providers because they had my daughter's whole history since birth and she has developmental delays." - Durham parent
17. Healthcare Access
17. Healthcare Access
Ensure families have regular access to convenient, affordable, preventive and responsive healthcare for the mother and child throughout pregnancy, childbirth, the postpartum period, and the early years.
Strategies
Strategies
The Recommendation: Ensure Families Have Access to Convenient, Affordable, Preventive, and Responsive Maternal and Child Healthcare
The Draft Strategies:
STRATEGY 17.1: Expand access to relational prenatal and postpartum supports, including birth and postpartum doulas, group prenatal care, and prenatal and postpartum support groups.
STRATEGY 17.2: Providers/medical systems should build intentional relationships with community-based organizations, to offer community resources to better serve their patients' needs.
STRATEGY 17.3: Educate families about healthy pregnancies, births, and childhoods in culturally competent and equitable ways. Ensure that education is developed and provided in ways that meet the needs of the community.
Why this Recommendation is Important to Our Community
Why this Recommendation is Important to Our Community
Pregnancy, childbirth, the postpartum period, and the early years offer critical opportunities to wrap families and their young children in support. Regular access to healthcare is critical to both prevention and intervention efforts related to health and to the social determinants of health. There are a number of barriers, including transportation, time off, insurance, cost, and lack of trust, that get in the way of families accessing the prenatal, postpartum, and well-child care that is necessary to keeping physical and mental health and development on track.
Community Voices:
“Health has been a struggle for us. We couldn’t go to the doctor because we didn’t have insurance. Without insurance, the fees were just too high.” - Durham parent
“Need more support in the postpartum period up to first year checking on moms and their babies." - Durham parent
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