Omaha organization launches Nebraska’s Black Maternal Health Month

Oct. 1, 2024, midnight ·

Black maternal health month
People from the medical, political and community health worker community, among others, attended the launch of Nebraska's Black Maternal Health Month. (Photo by Kassidy Arena/Nebraska Public Media News)

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The beginning of October marks the start of Nebraska’s Black Maternal Health Month, a designation advocates hope will raise awareness of the high maternal mortality rates and health disparities of Black birthing people.

Reproductive justice organization I Be Black Girl hosted an event for the month’s launch at their facility in Omaha. This year’s theme is ‘We’re Here, Now What?’ Executive Director Ashlei Spivey said this month is the time to call for more support in Black maternity care.

“We have an opportunity to have impactful change today, not tomorrow, not seven years from now, but right now,” she said. “We can make a commitment to changing the experiences for our Black pregnant people and folks with the capacity for pregnancy and root that in joy and abundance.”

Mother, community health worker and doula Justice Banks hopes to bring attention to the importance of her role in maternity care.

“I'm speaking up for doing a call to action for Nebraska on why doulas are necessary, especially for everyone, specifically for black women, to help those birth outcomes to be positive under medica, they should be covered under Medicaid coverage like other states in the country,” she said.

Beyond doula care, Spivey cited Nebraska ranks as the second highest in the U.S. for maternity care deserts.

“What we are experiencing now around maternal and child health, the negative outcomes, does not have to live. We can chart a course that is rooted in abundance and joy, in the care that we need,” she said.

Speaker at Black maternal health month event
Justice Banks spoke at the launch event about her experiences as a community health worker, a doula and a mother. She described her doula as her "second mother." (Photo by Kassidy Arena/Nebraska Public Media News)

Nebraska’s most recent Maternal Morbidity and Mortality report lists ratios in three forms: white, all other races combined, or unknown. Spivey emphasized the importance to disaggregate this data in order to better determine race-related health disparities.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), non-Hispanic Black people in the U.S. have a maternal mortality rate 2.6 times higher than the rate for their non-Hispanic white counterparts.

The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world and recent national data shows Nebraska has one of the higher rates at 26.2%.

From 2023-2028, I Be Black Girl received a $5 million grant to address these disparities in the state.

“We know where we've been,” Spivey said. "We know where we're currently, and there is so much opportunity into where we are going."

I Be Black Girl will host maternal health events throughout the month including networking events, health webinars every Thursday and a community baby shower.