Casa San Jose is a community resource center that advocates for and empowers Latinos by promoting integration and self-sufficiency through breaking down language barriers with prenatal care and delivery, confusion around insurance and payments for delivery, birth certificate complications such as names being misspelled, which can complicate applications for benefits, and social security cards.
The mission of the Pittsburgh Black Breastfeeding Circle is to protect, promote, and support human milk feeding as the cultural norm and optimal feeding method for birthing people of African descent in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, which includes providing culturally humble and relevant care led by trained and certified lactation professionals.
Black Women, Femmes, Girls and Folx deserve to live a long, healthy and joyous life. New Voices for Reproductive Justice develops the next generation of leaders, organizes communities and advocates for policy change at all levels.
PITTWIRE - EPI's Dara Mendez started her work in health equity as an undergrad and has now been researching racial and socioeconomic inequity in pregnancy, birth, and women's health for the past 18 years. She will lead a conversation with scholar Dána-Ain Davis, author of this year’s OBOC selection, on 2/26.
The Women's Health Activist Movement (WHAMglobal) is on a mission to identify the root causes of maternal mortality and better understand how we as a regio support and care for moms and families through the entirety of their care. The disparities in accessing maternal and child health care in Pittsburgh are alarming and maternal mortality is a public health crisis with serious disparities. In the U.S., maternal mortality rates are nearly four ti...
The Greater Pittsburgh Region, like most of the United States, faces disparate health outcomes, where Black mothers and babies die at higher rates than mothers and babies of other races. These health outcomes, which persist across socioeconomic backgrounds, are a direct result of systemic racism.
Muffy Mendoza created Brown Mamas to fill a void she’d noticed in her life’s journey as a daughter and a mother: the need to recognize the multifaceted work that goes into rearing children and building a life for them. This non-profit started as a small group of fired up African American mothers meeting in each other’s homes and has grown into a powerful nation of over 5,000 mothers of color with both online and offline membership.
Group Collaborator Divin Geri Endijen provides doula support for BIPOC and marginalized clients and centers around avoiding trauma and removing the trauma ties associated with being non-white and non-gender conforming. "We not only provide birth and postpartum services but we also provide Reiki and healing and massage therapy to the birthing person," explains Jeaonna Hodges, co-founder and CEO. "Our goal is to sever bonds of trauma so that the n...
In Allegheny County, Black women are 3-4 times more likley to die within one year of giving birth than White women. Black infants are 2.5-3 times more likely to die before the first year of life than White infants. The leading cause of death for Black infants is prematurity.
"My research, teaching, curriculum development and service applies equity, anti-racism, anti-oppression praxis as well as Black Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory and Public Health Critical Race Praxis. My research program focuses on understanding and addressing racial and socioeconomic inequity in pregnancy, birth, and women's health. I specifically employ novel methods to measure and understand how racism (including institutional and struct...
"I chose to pursue a doctoral degree after working for many years with a community-based program focused on improving birth experiences and maternal health outcomes for women in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. In my previous work, my staff and the women we served were often invited to participate in maternity care research, yet the reseach questions under investigation did not always align with our interests or our needs."
Founded in the fall of 2018 by EPI's Dara Mendez, this group has served as a platform for learners and early-career researchers to exchange ideas, network and collaborate on projects related to health equity, reproductive justice and maternal and child health. Resources and opportunities discussed and shared among the group focus on anti-oppression scholarship, critical race theory. The group also works in collaboration with local community and ...
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