Cook County Health is partnering with medical company Prism Health Care to provide pregnant patients with free doula care and bridge the maternal health gap between Black and White mothers.

While the pilot program is not yet running, it will get started this year by hiring 10 doulas with plans to expand in the future. Part of the plan is to provide culturally sensitive care such as bilingual language services; to build community partnerships; and to create empowering birth plans for expectant mothers.

The county budget has allocated $1 million to the program.

Black women locally and nationally are disproportionately affected by prenatal and postpartum complications. A study from Northwestern Medicine found that in a cohort of 988,480 births at 127 hospitals across the state of Illinois between January 2016 and June 2023, the overall rate of severe maternal complications rose 1.4% to 2%. Of that, non-Hispanic Black patients had more than double the severe maternal morbidity rate (2.6%) compared to their non-Hispanic White counterparts (1.1%).

For Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, her birth story was marked by a discriminatory and accusatory line of questions.

“Twenty-one years ago, I had my first son,” the commissioner recalled. “When a fellow came in (the hospital room) and asked me multiple questions and one of them was, ‘Have you used drugs?’ And I said no. And he said, ‘Well, are you sure you haven’t used drugs?’ It just goes back to if you had a doula or someone there supporting you that could’ve been alleviated from the very beginning.”

Dr. Mary Tate is an attending physician of obstetrics and gynecology at Cook County Health who trained to be a doula while attending medical school. As she explains, doulas are an extension of the care that’s provided for pregnant people.

“Doulas are really the experts at being able to support people emotionally and physically through this process of being pregnant, of labor and delivery and the initial postpartum period,” Tate said.

She stressed how important the doula program is for the outcomes of Black and Brown mothers and their children, stating that the presence of doulas can significantly decrease the rates of postpartum depression and anxiety in patients.

Doulas who take part in the county’s initiative will receive cultural competency training along with continued education for birth justice.

“We have other programs that are in our system that are supporting infant and maternal mortality for our patient population,” said Christina Urbina, executive administrator over women and children’s services at Cook County Health. “This is an added resource to what we already have in our system. So this is just another piece to the puzzle that we’re adding, a valuable piece of the puzzle that we’re adding to really support our patients.”

Any pregnant patient in the Cook County Health system who wants to be partnered with a doula will be able to gain access to the resource once available.

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