Happy Black Maternal Health Week, y’all
Journalist, mom and former “The Talk” co-host Elaine Welteroth launched a fund to make women’s lives a year round priority .
Elaine Welteroth created birthFUND–its mission is to fund midwifery services for families unable to afford it–as “a safety net of resources for families across the country to expand immediate access to quality, life-saving maternal health care,” she writes on Instagram.
The birthFUND was kicked off by a fundraiser and Elaine saw the need that families had.
“It all started with a little Instagram fundraiser for my birthday that raised enough money to cover the cost of birth care for not one but two families in just 16 hours,” Welteroth explained in an Instagram post. “Then I called on some friends, corporate partners, and beloved birth workers who formed a powerful founding funding circle.”
That circle includes John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Kelly Rowland and Serena Williams as founders and investors of birthFUND.
“Having babies in America was a wake-up call for both of us,” Williams said of the partnership in an op-ed for Time Magazine coauthored by Welteroth. “We have both accomplished a lot in our lives and careers [and] needless to say, we can do hard things. But nothing made us feel as disempowered as being pregnant and Black in America, left to rely upon a medical system that is statistically failing people who look like us.”
birthFUND works by matching individual financiars with families in need of support during pregnancy and labor.
Lord knows we need it. The US has the highest rate of infant mortality in the world. And Black woman are three times more likely to die in child birth than other races, according to Centers for Disease Control.
There is some good news.
Midwifery may be the answer to this very preventable problem. The World Health Organization reports midwives would prevent 80% of maternal deaths and stillborns during childbirth.
Black women are dying at alarming rates. Tori Bowie should not die in vain.
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