It’s a Wednesday morning at the Family Health and Birth Center (FHBC), a prenatal clinic and birth center housed within a larger federally qualified health center called Community of Hope. The clinic is located in a shopping mall, across the street from a Safeway grocery store, next door to an Aldi store, and situated in a predominantly Black and low-income part of the city, that, like most of Washington, D.C., is rapidly changing. The lot on which the clinic stands is set to become condos, and signs outside the parking area proudly announce that fact.
But today, seven Black pregnant women have gathered in a classroom for their two-hour prenatal care group, facilitated by FHBC’s group care coordinator, Paris Carter, a Black woman in her late 20s with long braids and a shaved undercut. As the women snack on fruit, yogurt, and muffins, they paint the plaster casts of their pregnant bellies that they made at the last session. Beyoncé plays in the background.
This group is one of three or four that meet each week at FHBC and represents a core part of the prenatal care model gaining traction nationally, called CenteringPregnancy, which recommends this kind of setting and provides training and materials to facilitators. In the midst of a national dialogue about the health of pregnant and parenting Black women, FHBC’s work shows what it looks like to provide prenatal care that significantly improves outcomes for vulnerable populations. The clinic has seen healthier moms and babies than the statistics for the region have shown, offering a model for others on what it takes to improve health and wellness for Black women and children.
[For more on this story by Miriam Zoila Pérez, go to https://rewire.news/article/20...wer-for-black-women/]
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