Doulas are helping birthing families in Michigan more than ever

Federal cuts to Medicaid could create a mother of problems for many Michiganders, including expectant moms—like the ones who rely on this doula collective in West Michigan.

Before she became the program director for Day One Doula Collective, Kiara Baskin of Grand Rapids was a doula trying to find her professional community.

Baskin entered the maternal child health care field in 2016 but said there weren’t many opportunities back then for BIPOC folks specifically to get doula training. A lack of continuing education opportunities and no infrastructure to sustain doula work in Michigan made finding fellow doulas to connect with and refer patients to difficult.

“These folks were getting trained and then didn’t have the additional support to continue,” Baskin said. 

“There also wasn’t a pocket of doulas that you could go to for support if you were someone who was looking to get into the community. You were pretty much a lone wolf.”

A birth doula is a certified birthing professional who can offer educational, emotional, and physical support and advocate for patients before, during, and after childbirth. Studies have shown that expectant mothers who receive doula support are four times less likely to have a baby with a low birth weight, two times less likely to experience a birth complication involving themselves or their baby, and are more likely to initiate breastfeeding. 

Here in the US, the maternal mortality rate is significantly higher than in other high-income countries—22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022. And for Black mothers, the mortality rate is more than twice as high—nearly 50 deaths per 100,000 live births. With vast maternity care deserts across Michigan, doulas serve an especially critical role.

Related: Medicaid-covered doulas are bridging the gaps for Black mothers in Michigan

Through word-of-mouth, Baskin eventually connected with a handful of fellow doulas, like Tiffany Townsend—the first Black Latinx certified professional midwife in Grand Rapids. 

In 2020, emboldened by her slowly growing doula network, Baskin became the co-chair of a three-year-long birth equity pilot program conceived through KConnect, a group of organizations working together to better the health and livelihood of all kids in Kent County. 

The program was hosted at the Baxter Community Center, which has a long history as a haven for locals. The center opened in Grand Rapids in 1969 amid deepening racial inequality and social injustices and has continued to serve as a resource hub for the community. 

Baskin said that the partnership with the Baxter Community Center in Grand Rapids created a community where dozens of folks interested in maternal health care had “a soft place to land” on their way to becoming certified doulas throughout the three-year program.

Creating family

“There’s a huge learning curve—none of the systems were set up for us as doulas, they had to create those for us,” explained Baskin.  

Those systems started happening in 2022, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced that the state government would expand Medicaid to ensure new moms and babies had health insurance for a full 12 months after giving birth. Then, in 2023, Whitmer included doula services for Medicaid recipients as part of her “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies” initiative. 

The expansion included creating the Doula Initiative, a program that partners with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) to connect pregnant Michiganders with a statewide network of birth doulas.

Since January 2023, nearly 450 doulas have joined the registry, about 60% of whom are covered by Medicaid. MDHHS also approved over a dozen programs and organizations from around the state to help train future doulas, like the Day One Doula Collective (DODC) in Grand Rapids. 

The success of DODC’s training programs allowed them to become a permanent fixture at the Baxter Community Center and expand their programming. 

“For the state of Michigan to allow our trainees to serve Medicaid beneficiaries, that is huge,” said Baskin, who began serving as the DODC’s program director in 2023. The Collective soon began hosting a “Medicaid 101” training, which teaches participants how to bill and be reimbursed by Medicaid. 

In addition to three doula training cohorts per year and the Medicaid training, DODC hosts an eight-hour breastfeeding peer education program—and even a course on Zulu belly-binding to help their clients. 

Since opening its doors at Baxter Community College, Baskin said that DODC has had 100 Michiganders graduate throughout their various disciplines.

“We want to make sure our clients feel seen, heard, and respected, but we have to create that space for ourselves and the folks we’re training to create those pockets of peace, space, and safety for our folks.”.

“It’s creating more than community—it’s creating family.”