CHOICES: Memphis Center for Reproductive Health is launching a fellowship to train Black midwives in an effort to create a stronger workforce of Black midwives here, the nonprofit announced Tuesday.
The Center for Excellence Nurse Midwifery Fellowship will introduce recent midwife graduates to CHOICES’ full-spectrum reproductive and sexual health model. The year-long training program will also focus on reproductive and social justice principles.
The goal is for fellows to be able to provide more inclusive, patient-centered healthcare, while taking action to dismantle systems of reproductive oppression and injustices.
Dr. Nikia Grayson, CHOICES’ director of clinical services, said Black women are dying of pregnancy-related causes at much higher rates than white women.
“We must do our part to end racial disparities in maternal and infant health, and this fellowship is part of the solution,” Grayson said. “Black women deserve high quality, culturally competent providers, and we are truly honored at CHOICES to help train the next generation of midwives to care for their communities.”
Black women were 1.5 times as likely as white women to die during or within the first year of pregnancy between 2017 and 2019, according to data from the Tennessee Department of Health. And Black women were 3.9 times as likely as white women to die from pregnancy-related causes.
The fellows will have the opportunity to attend various types of births in different settings, working alongside CHOICES’ Black-led midwifery birthing team.
Candidates must identify as Black or African American, have at least a master’s degree in nursing, have completed a certified nurse-midwife (CNM) program no more than a year ago, and have a current Tennessee CNM license or be eligible for one.
CHOICES’ president Jennifer Pepper said the fellowship is the latest example of the nonprofit’s effort to be at the “forefront of innovation in the reproductive and sexual healthcare field.”
“We are excited to share CHOICES’ values and to help create a workforce of Black midwives who are ready to care for people in a holistic and patient-centered way,” Pepper said.
The fellowship is funded in part by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences Global Action in Nursing project, and Groundswell Fund’s Birth Justice Fund.
