WEEKLY UPDATE: 04/16/26
This Black Maternal Health Week, the Connecticut Hospital Association (CHA) is proud to announce that birthing hospitals in Fairfield County will soon launch new educational programming focused on building and enhancing connections between clinicians and doulas. This ongoing, evolving project elevates CHA’s sustained efforts to mitigate stark racial inequities in maternal health outcomes — a pillar of Connecticut hospitals’ statewide strategy to improve maternal health.
Pursuant to a partnership with Fairfield County’s Community Foundation (FCCF) Black Maternal Health Initiative, CHA convened a cohort of Connecticut perinatal care providers and community doulas from across the state to co-design a curriculum to be implemented in Fairfield County’s six birthing hospitals. The group exchanged lived experiences and valuable expertise, then synthesized those insights into a defined set of core policies and practices needed to cultivate a doula-friendly hospital environment. This collaborative process not only shaped the education to be delivered in Fairfield County facilities over the coming months, but also laid the groundwork to achieve the future goal of scaling the project for statewide deployment.
Starting in May, the six birthing hospitals in southeastern Connecticut — including Hartford HealthCare’s St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Northwell Health’s Danbury and Norwalk Hospitals, Stamford Health, and Yale New Haven Health’s Bridgeport and Greenwich Hospitals — will invite community doulas and perinatal hospital staff to participate in joint, interactive, educational forums. The programming will clarify doulas’ roles and scope of practice, teach evidence-based benefits of doula support, provide tools to improve communication and coordination, and identify and address common misconceptions about doulas.
The Connecticut Department of Public Health’s (DPH) Severe Maternal Morbidity Report: 2010-2020, released in December 2023, reported that, statewide, Black women experience severe maternal morbidity at twice the rate of white women, and these alarming disparities are most prominent in Fairfield, New Haven, and Windham Counties.
Doula collaboration is a systemic intervention to reduce maternal health inequities and build a community of practice that acknowledges the deep-rooted impact of structural racism in the delivery of care. Studies show doula-supported births may reduce maternal and infant complications, lower maternal stress, and increase patient satisfaction with the birthing experience. Doulas and clinicians play complementary roles during the labor and delivery event, each contributing a unique set of skills that, together, may lead to stronger maternal and newborn outcomes and improve patient satisfaction.
More information on the educational forums will be shared in the coming weeks. Questions can be directed to Selina Osei, director of health equity and community engagement, CHA, at osei@chime.org.
The doula-clinician collaboration programming is one piece of the infrastructure that Connecticut hospitals support to enhance respectful, culturally responsive care, address implicit bias through ongoing training, and ensure every patient feels heard, safe, and supported. Explore all of CHA’s ongoing maternal health initiatives here.
Click here to learn more about the project to enhance doula-clinician collaboration in birthing hospitals.
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