Racial Disparities in Maternity Care: Where Do We Go From Here?

This session is presented by FNU Assistant Professor Dr. Heather Clarke and FNU President Dr. Susan Stone

It is well known that maternal and infant mortality affects black and indigenous women at a much higher rate than other races. Racism is the core of the problem. How do we rebuild systems that are based on structural racism and put strategies in place to start to build true change. This session will review the issues related to health care disparities and discuss how midwives can engage in meaningful strategies for change.

At the completion of this session, you will be able to:

• Identify disparities in health care outcomes for black and indigenous women and their infants.
• Recognize how racism affects the health outcomes of black and indigenous women and their infants.
• Describe change theory and how it can be applied to the problem of structural racism.
• Recommend at least three strategies that can be applied to improve health outcomes for black and indigenous women and their infants.

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Presenters

Heather Clarke, DNP, CNM, APRN, FACNM

Dr. Heather Clarke has been a Certified Nurse-Midwife for over 40 years. She earned a master’s degree in nurse-midwifery from Columbia University and a Doctor of Nursing Practice from Frontier Nursing University where she currently serves as an Assistant Professor educating nurse practitioners and nurse-midwives. Over the years Dr. Clarke served women and families in a variety of clinical settings including patients’ homes, birthing centers, community and high-risk tertiary care hospitals. Additionally, she has taught nurse-midwifery at many prominent educational programs. Throughout most of her career, Dr. Clarke was concerned about reports of Black women and babies dying at rates 2-4 times that of their White counterparts. She worked as a community advocate for reproductive justice in the mid 80’s. She spent many years in public health leading federally funded initiatives aimed to address race-related MCH disparities. Later as a perinatal consultant/project manager for another CDC funded project, Dr. Clarke piloted an integrated community-based program and developed a digital risk assessment tool which was used to quickly identify at-risk women. Most recently, Dr. Clarke served on the CDC, preconception workgroup panel. She helped to author and publish clinical standard guidelines for preconception care in 2014. She supports the CDC’s recommendation for preconception as the optimal time to begin perinatal care in order to improve pregnancy outcomes and reduce race related disparities. Dr. Clarke firmly believes that “Midwives are in the best position to provide preconception and early prenatal care. She states “The more attention, prevention, and intervention, midwives offer during preconception and early pregnancy, the more they grow to trust and choose a midwife for the remainder of their pregnancy.

Susan E Stone, CNM, DNSc, FACNM, FAAN

Dr. Susan E. Stone, a certified nurse-midwife, is a leader in strategic development to increase the quality and capacity of the midwifery and advanced practice nursing workforce, with the specific goal of improving health care for families. Her primary position for the last two decades is as the President of Frontier Nursing University where she has grown the University from a community-based school of nurse-midwifery offering a basic certificate program with 200 students enrolled, to an accredited University offering masters and doctoral degrees to nurses seeking graduate credentials. Today the University has over 2,000 graduate and doctoral nursing students enrolled from every state in the United States and seven foreign countries. The focus is educating primary care providers to serve rural and underserved populations. Dr. Stone the immediate past President of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) where her agenda included increasing the midwifery workforce through educational quality and capacity strategies, midwifery advocacy focusing on the maternal mortality and morbidity crisis, and growing the diversity in the healthcare workforce. She believes collaboration with other health care professionals is an essential component to improve the health of women and families and continues to foster this approach in her various roles.