North Philly Trains Doulas To Deal With Philly’s “Maternity Crisis”

Next City reports on efforts to train doulas in North Philly because of the ever-diminishing number of maternity wards in town. The result, officials say, is a crisis in Philadelphia’s maternal health care system:

Fifteen years ago, Philadelphia had 19 maternity wards. Now there are six. Wards have closed one by one, many citing financial burdens. Maternity wards lose money, Medicaid reimbursement rates fall short of the costs of births, and Philadelphia doctors pay high fees for medical malpractice insurance due to historically high levels of expensive lawsuits.

“We need people to recognize that we’re having a crisis in Philadelphia,” said Vivian Lowenstein, a Certified Nurse-Midwife who has worked in maternity centers around the city for nearly three decades. She likened the dearth of maternity facilities to urban food deserts: “You can’t get healthy food in some neighborhoods, and you can’t birth in certain neighborhoods.”

The doulas are being trained by the Maternity Care Coalition, a non-governmental non-profit agency designed to help  mothers get through birth and start their kids off to a healthy life by breast-feeding them at a young age.