How Community-Based Doula Care Can Help Solve Our Maternal Health Crisis

A Brooklyn-based community group is making doula care available to pregnant, postpartum, and parenting people of color, regardless of their ability to pay.

Giving birth is one of the most important events in most families’ lives. Everyone deserves a safe, dignified, respectful birthing experience—but it’s been out of reach for too many people in the United States for too long. A Brooklyn-based community group, Ancient Song, Inc., is working to change that by making high-quality doula care and services available to pregnant, postpartum, and parenting people of color, regardless of their ability to pay.

Our country’s maternal health crisis is well-documented. Each year, hundreds die during pregnancy or in the year after giving birth. U.S. birth outcomes are worse than those in other developed nations and there are deep disparities, with Black and Indigenous women much more likely than others to suffer pregnancy-related deaths. This crisis stems from longstanding policies and practices that intentionally disadvantage some people based on their race, class, and other factors and these barriers have deepened in recent years. The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which allows states to deny residents access to abortion has intensified these harms.

But just as people put barriers in place to deny some of us access to quality care, people can remove those barriers. Ancient Song is leading the way.

Putting the Humanity Back in Healthcare

Chanel Porchia-Albert founded Ancient Song (formerly Ancient Song Doula Services) in 2008 to advance reproductive and birth justice. Unsatisfied with the traditional healthcare system during her first pregnancy, she enlisted a Black doula who guided her through homebirth. She quickly realized that other pregnant people of color deserved the same information and holistic emotional and physical support that these trained professionals provide before, during, and after birth.

The mother of six later learned that four in five pregnancy-related deaths in the United States are preventable, and she knew that doulas were associated with better health outcomes. Porchia-Albert became determined both to improve the birthing experience for people of color and to find ways to prevent the system failures that contributed to these maternal crises. “The population we serve is primarily women of color, low-income individuals, people at the intersections of housing insecurity, food insecurity, intimate partner violence,” she says. “I started to see the way people were treated, the criminalization of Black bodies, police being called on partners, the way people on Medicaid were treated.” She realized doulas could be part of the solution.

“Are you ready to be a doula? Are you ready to serve your community?”

That’s how Porchia-Albert greets a group of women who come to Ancient Song for doula training, which now typically draws 60 trainees each month. Doula training “became my purpose,” she says, and the community-based doulas Ancient Song trains share the same background, culture, and language as the clients they serve. She is proud that they make it possible for people to make informed decisions during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period without unnecessary medical interventions, coercion, or reprisals if they refuse care. “If we want to change the way people experience healthcare, then we have to bring the humanity back to it,” and the doulas Ancient Song trains do just that.

Advocating for Better Policies

“The blessing of this work is that you get to see the people you have helped. To see someone come into themselves as a parent, as a mother, as an individual—it’s amazing.”

But Porchia-Albert is doing even more. Ancient Song also works to shift the narrative by spreading stories of hope to build social and political power around maternal healthcare. “You can’t be a Black doula…and just be offering emotional and physical support. You have the duty of really pushing forth advocacy and systemic change,” she says.

“Black maternal health so important,” she adds. “Our maternal health infrastructure in the U.S. is not working for anyone. So how do we shift the ways in which care is provided? We can do it through policy, like the policies around insurance reimbursements.”  

Today Ancient Song advocates for doula reimbursement under Medicaid and works broadly to improve maternal health policy at the city, state, and federal levels. And it is pressing Congress to pass the Momnibus Act, a package of 13 bills that will comprehensively address the nation’s maternal health crisis. All its advocacy stems from listening to the lived experiences of individuals.

At this time when our nation’s healthcare system is under massive pressure, the services Ancient Song is providing, the model it created, and the policy change it is advancing are more important than ever.

Why the name Ancient Song? Because Porchia-Albert was singing during her first labor, and she says everyone has an “ancient song” that they sing at key moments in life. “We are our ancestors’ hope in the present and we’re creating hope for the future,” she adds.