Phoenix Midwife and Founder Marinah V Farrell was awarded a subrecipient grant through Maricopa County for her project, “Transforming Health Systems to Support Indigenous Maternal Health”.

The award was used to support:

Programing in education and training

The Indigenous Birth conference in 2023 which brought together indigenous maternal health leaders from Arizona and around the country,

supported elder and indigenous participation in community wellness and land sovereignty,

indigenous data mapping,

supported indigenous and immigrant certification programs in health-related community care,

birth center workshops to improve access to maternity and postpartum care,

Information gathering from Arizona stakeholders related to tribal and immigrant maternal health,

Participation in the Arizona Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring system (PRAMS),

COVID education and workshops,

and professional support for Marinah V. Farrell to continue her leadership and community support.

In 2018, the Institute for Medicaid Innovation (IMI) launched the high-value, evidence-based maternal models of care initiative. With support from the Yellow Chair Foundation, a comprehensive report was developed for state Medicaid agencies and Medicaid health plans to support their exploration of opportunities to improve maternal health outcomes. After the release, Medicaid stakeholders, including state Medicaid agencies, health plans, and provider groups, requested more information. In response, IMI launched an 8-part virtual learning series, inviting national experts to dive deeper into the topics highlighted in the report while also sharing their personal experiences and answering participant questions in real time. We are fortunate to now embark upon the third phase of this work, a midwifery learning collaborative (MLC).

The MLC is an intensive 3-year learning collaborative that will provide support, resources, and guidance for state-based teams looking to develop sustainable initiatives to advance midwifery-led models of care for the Medicaid population in their communities. Each team will customize their journey, selecting their focal areas (e.g., licensure, reimbursement, contracting terms and modifications), to ensure that it reflects their needs. The learning collaborative will offer individualized team support with the goal of increased access to the model and better birth outcomes.

States applied to be a part of this collaborative, with Arizona being selected. Our team of BIPOC and community based leaders in maternal health have come together to focus on exploring the current lack of access to the Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment (Medicaid) for midwives and those wishing to use medicaid for midwifery models of care. The lack of access to midwives for communities of color is a detriment and accentuates the dismal outcomes of maternal health in the state.

If you wish to become more involved in the efforts around Medicaid expansion for midwifery access, please contact us.

Birth Center Equity was born in April, 2020, during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, Leseliey Welch (Birth Detroit) and Nashira Baril (Neighborhood Birth Center) began receiving message after message from people asking them, “Is your birth center open?” Their heartbreaking answer to each caller was, “No, not yet.” These callers, often people far along in their pregnancy, were seeking a safe place to give birth, somewhere that was not a hospital overwhelmed with COVID-19.

What they sought was the safety of a community birth center, a homelike facility where prenatal, labor, birth, and postpartum care is provided in the midwifery and wellness model, and birthing people are supported to make informed decisions about how and where they birth.

The urgency and opportunity of the pandemic led Leseliey and Nashira to join with trusted partners Julie Quiroz (New Moon Collaborations) and Taj James, Rachel Burrows and Ruben Hernandez (Full Spectrum Capital Partners) to create Birth Center Equity as a channel for resources to increase access to community birth center care during COVID-19 and to create a vibrant lasting community birth center infrastructure across the country.

Marinah joined Birth Center Equity as the Director of Organizational Wellness in March, 2022, and became a fellow in 2023.

If you are interested in being a birth center leader or currently are a BIPOC leader in Birth Center care, please contact us at Birth Center Equity for more information.

A podcast created, produced and edited by Marinah

Dignity Birth Campaign, supported by Core Align’s Innovation Lab, is a leadership project focused on dignity for midwives.

This was a collaboration with Compassionate Birth Project , the guidance and wisdom of Robyn Sheldon of Mama Bamba, and the Midwives Alliance of North America.

Our team offered workshops across the world, as well as presented at the International Confederation of Midwives conference in Toronto, Canada.

Although our team has not been active recently, this initiative continues to be an inspiration for future collaborations that prioritize bringing the heart back to midwifery and the dignity and value of midwives around the world.

A collaboration of Parteras de Maiz, Arizona Birthworkers of Color and Cihuapactli Collective, with support from Social Movements in Innovation, was a project designed to have birth workers of color from three organizations to come together and create a report in Arizona on birth work as well as to work together on relationship and collaboration.