
Birthing Justice is a new addition to Himmelfarb Library’s Streaming Video Collection. Birthing Justice explores the maternal health crisis in the African American community:
Black women in the United States are three to five times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white peers, a statistic that has actually gotten worse over the last 30 years. Birthing Justice captures the experiences and challenges of Black women, their families, caretakers, and advocates, and examines the structures and systems that determine these disparate mortality rates.
GW faculty can integrate Birthing Justice and other selections from this collection into their instruction, and GW faculty, students, and staff can watch these videos online at no charge. The Streaming Video Collection features documentaries related to public health and health policy, and Himmelfarb Library provides access to additional resources to complement discussion of the documentaries.
Resources include links to the Birthing Justice Discussion Guide, a Proceedings of a 2021 National Academies Workshop on Advancing Maternal Health Equity and Reducing Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, and a selection of recent articles on this topic:
- Boakye, P. N., & Prendergast, N. (2024). "There is nothing to protect us from dying": Black women's perceived sense of safety accessing pregnancy and intrapartum care. Nursing Inquiry, 31(3), e12638. doi:10.1111/nin.12638 PMID:38534008
- Brown, Z., Messaoudi, C., Silvia, E., Bleau, H., Meskill, A., Flynn, A., . . . Ball, T. J. (2023). Postpartum navigation decreases severe maternal morbidity most among black women. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 229(2), 160.e1–160.e8. doi:10.1016/j.ajog.2023.01.002 PMID:36610531
- Byrd, T. E., Ingram, L. A., & Okpara, N. (2022). Examination of maternal near-miss experiences in the hospital setting among black women in the United States. Women's Health (London, England), 18, 17455057221133830. doi:10.1177/17455057221133830 PMID:36325622 PMCID:PMC9638691
- Cantor, A. G., Jungbauer, R. M., Skelly, A. C., Hart, E. L., Jorda, K., Davis-O'Reilly, C., . . . Tilden, E. L. (2024). Respectful maternity care : A systematic review. Annals of Internal Medicine, 177(1), 50–64. doi:10.7326/M23-2676 PMID:38163377
- Carvajal, D. N., McLean, I., Wang, L., Brahmi, D., & Washington, J. C. (2024). Equity and justice in family medicine clinical care and teaching must incorporate a reproductive justice framework. Family Medicine, 56(4), 222–228. doi:10.22454/FamMed.2024.973758 PMID:38748631 PMCID:PMC11189118
- Diouf, F., Thompson, T., Silesky, M., & Bonnevie, E. (2024). A call to action: Supporting black maternal and infant health using the collective impact model. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 28(8), 1265–1271. doi:10.1007/s10995-024-03937-z PMID:38844649
- Gilliam, S. M., Hylick, K., Taylor, E. N., La Barrie, D. L., Hatchett, E. E., Finch, M. Y., & Kavalakuntla, Y. (2024). Intersectionality in black maternal health experiences: Implications for intersectional maternal mental health research, policy, and practice. Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health, 69(4), 462–468. doi:10.1111/jmwh.13609 PMID:38319012
- Hailu, E. M., Maddali, S. R., Snowden, J. M., Carmichael, S. L., & Mujahid, M. S. (2022). Structural racism and adverse maternal health outcomes: A systematic review. Health & Place, 78, 102923. doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2022.102923 PMID:36401939 PMCID:PMC11216026
- Huang, R. S., Spence, A. R., & Abenhaim, H. A. (2024). Racial disparities in national maternal mortality trends in the United States from 2000 to 2019: A population-based study on 80 million live births. Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 309(4), 1315–1322. doi:10.1007/s00404-023-06999-6 PMID:36933039
- Ibrahim Sous, C., Moravec, W., DeFranco, E., Kelly, E. A., & Rossi, R. M. (2024). Factors associated with maternal morbidity among black women in the United States. American Journal of Perinatology, doi:10.1055/a-2295-4058 PMID:38531390
- Josiah, N., Russell, N., DeVaughn, L., Dorcelly, N., Charles, M., Shoola, H., . . . Baptiste, D. (2023). Implicit bias, neuroscience and reproductive health amid increasing maternal mortality rates among black birthing women. Nursing Open, 10(9), 5780–5783. doi:10.1002/nop2.1759 PMID:37327404 PMCID:PMC10416051
- Kimani, R. W. (2024). Reexamining the use of race in medical algorithms: The maternal health calculator debate. Frontiers in Public Health, 12, 1417429. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2024.1417429 PMID:38939564 PMCID:PMC11208672
- Krishnamoorthi, M., Balbierz, A., Laraque-Arena, D., & Howell, E. A. (2023). Addressing the national crisis facing black and latina women, birthing people, and infants: The maternal and child health equity summit. Obstetrics and Gynecology, 141(3), 467–472. doi:10.1097/AOG.0000000000005067 PMID:36735384 PMCID:PMC9974748
- Liese, K., Stewart, K., Pearson, P., Lofton, S., Mbande, T., Patil, C., . . . Geller, S. (2022). Melanated group midwifery care: Centering the voices of the black birthing community. Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health, 67(6), 696–700. doi:10.1111/jmwh.13438 PMID:36480019 PMCID:PMC10107514
- Murphy, L., Liu, F., Keele, R., Spencer, B., Kistner Ellis, K., & Sumpter, D. (2022). An integrative review of the perinatal experiences of black women. Nursing for Women's Health, 26(6), 462–472. doi:10.1016/j.nwh.2022.09.008 PMID:36328085
- Njoku, A., Evans, M., Nimo-Sefah, L., & Bailey, J. (2023). Listen to the whispers before they become screams: Addressing black maternal morbidity and mortality in the United States. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 11(3), 438. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11030438. doi:10.3390/healthcare11030438 PMID:36767014 PMCID:PMC9914526
- Patchen, L., McCullers, A., Beach, C., Browning, M., Porter, S., Danielson, A., . . . Ahmed, N. (2024). Safe babies, safe moms: A multifaceted, trauma-informed care initiative. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 28(1), 31–37. doi:10.1007/s10995-023-03840-z PMID:37982953 PMCID:PMC10876492
- Post, W., Thomas, A., & Sutton, K. M. (2024). "Black women should not die giving life": The lived experiences of black women diagnosed with severe maternal morbidity in the United States. Birth (Berkeley, Calif.), doi:10.1111/birt.12820 PMID:38563087
- Salahshurian, E., & Moore, T. A. (2023). Integrative review of black birthing people's interactions with clinicians during the perinatal period. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 45(11), 1063–1071. doi:10.1177/01939459231202493 PMID:37772363
- Tran, P., Jreij, B., Sistani, F., & Shaya, F. T. (2023). Disparities in maternal mortality. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, 7(1), e192. doi:10.1017/cts.2023.520 PMID:37745934 PMCID:PMC10514681
Explore the Streaming Video Collection for additional titles and ask us at Himmelfarb Library if you’d like assistance in identifying complementary resources for specific titles. If you’d like to recommend a new title to the collection, please contact Acquisitions & Resource Sharing Librarian Ian Roberts, (imroberts@gwu.edu).