Springfield city officials and community members gathered at City Hall to celebrate the commencement of Black Maternal Health Week on Friday. The national campaign occurs annually from April 11-17 and is designed to foster awareness, activism and community surrounding racial inequities in maternal care.
“Black women in the US die three to four times [more frequently] from pregnancy related complications than white women,” said Springfield City Councilor Tracye Whitfield. She attributes the discrepancy to implicit biases in healthcare, and inaccessibility to prenatal and postpartum care for Black mothers.
Black Maternal Health Week was started in 2018 by Georgia-based activist group Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA). In 2016, BMMA worked with the Center for Reproductive Justice to develop the Black Mamas Matter Toolkit. The document contains talking points and black maternal health facts that organizations can use to host local BMHW events, like the one in Springfield.
Springfield has participated in Black Maternal Health Week every year since 2023.
Shenell Ford, a local lactation specialist and organizer of the event, said she is inspired by the work BMMA does. Ford uses her role as a mayoral aide and co-chair of Springfield’s Maternal Child Health Commission of the Department of Health and Human Services, to lead lactation advocacy efforts in the city.
In 2020, Ford launched a lactation and wellness clinic called Heart2Heartbeat in Springfield. She said her career has largely been driven by her personal experiences with motherhood and breastfeeding and her love for the Springfield community.
“I’ve always been really involved in my community, especially [after] becoming a lactation consultant to certified perinatal educator. Now I’m on the track to become a childbirth educator,” she said. “[I] just want to make sure that I’m equipping myself with as many tools as possible to be able to turn around and support the families here.”
She stresses the importance of providing maternal health care to all reaches of the community.
“Our Black families deserve to walk into these spaces where they are their most vulnerable [and] where they are able to walk out with their babies,” Ford said. “This is not a game. They’re not just statistics. They’re not just numbers. These are people.