
Their clients are over 70% Black and brown and 82% identify as living with a low income. Chicago Volunteer Doulas’ leadership team is 100% Black-identifying and 50% lesbian, bisexual or queer-identifying. She added the organization is effective in its work in part because of its makeup. “We want to provide the education and care that we have access to as a way of empowering and uplifting what the beauty and the gifts that we already know exist within our community.” “We are recognizing that we are surviving an unjust world together and we are in a loving, caring relationship with our clients and we respect their dignity and their autonomy,” she said. They all were people of color, LGBTQ+, disabled, survivors of violence, experienced pregnancy loss, birth trauma or postpartum depression, had refugee status, practiced a marginalized religion or had an annual income below $50,0000.

Last year, Tanyavutti said the Chicago Volunteer Doulas served 200 clients. Marion Sims’ gynecological research on enslaved Black women without anesthesia in 1845. Tanyavutti said the antiracist component of a doula’s work is necessary because of a long history of racism in the medical field.
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On the other hand, Chicago Volunteer Doulas reported a 6% low birth weight rate among their clients, Tanyavutti said.Ī doula is a professional labor assistant who provides support to parents during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Tanyavutti presented “Antiracist Birthwork and Antiracist Outcomes,” a training on birth justice, Thursday night with the Evanston Public Library.Īccording to the Illinois Department of Public Health, more than 11% of babies in the state were born at low birth weight in 2019.
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This is not something that we need to accept any longer as normal.” “Our clients have defied the odds for instances of low birth weight, and low breast and chest feeding rates. “When we commit to doing antiracist birth work, we can produce antiracist outcomes,” Evanston resident and Executive Director of Chicago Volunteer Doulas Anya Tanyavutti said. Chicago Volunteer Doulas is working to change that. African Americans experience double the number of life-threatening pregnancy-related complications compared to non-Hispanic white Americans.
