Sistas Caring 4 Sistas

Mission:  “SUPPORT, PROVIDE, ENSURE, INFORM AND ASSIST IN GROWING EQUITABLE OUTCOMES FOR  FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES OF COLOR”  

Vision: Sistas Caring 4 Sistas vision is to eliminate inequities affecting pregnant birthing individuals of color and their families with a primary focus around black maternal health, by providing evidence based education, doula services, and postpartum support to families who face financial barriers, structural and institutional racism, and stigmas by building sustainable communities through advocacy, job creation, sustainable housing, direct resources,a positive network and community connection.

• Doula Services

  • Provide emotional and physical support to families from preconception to parenthood

  • Provide evidence-based information to communities

  • Building relationships through open lines of communication

  • Birthing support

  • Postpartum support

  • Partner support

  • Lactation Support

• “After five” resource connection  

  • Highly trained professionals who provide in home support

  • Meeting families where they are to provide support at any time

  • Connection to additional resources that supports healthy families

  • Assisting families navigate systems which impact Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) such as Justice Center, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), Social Services, Food and Nutrition, and Transportation

• Ensure, inform, and assist 

  • Respects informed choice

  • Provide new mom support group access when applicable 

  • Non-judgmental safe and healthy spaces

  • Childbirth Education

  • Lactation Education

  • Parenting Education 

• Growing Sustainable communities

  • SC4S provides Pathways to direct entry access to professional trainings in the perinatal health field 

  • Mentoring Program

  • Creating a pathway towards sustainable housing that will provide safe space for families of color who are facing or experiencing homelessness 

• SistasCaring4Sistas on MAHEC campus

  • Presence on campus

  • Open Access to clients

    • Direct connection to provider

    • Ability to access medical spaces otherwise restricted 

Mothering Asheville Movement

Vision: Black families will experience healthy births, Black babies will experience a healthy first year of life and beyond, and Black people will thrive even more in their power by advancing just, equitable, anti-racist, accountable and transformed systems and community.

Goals from New Strategic Plan:

• Support and sustain doulas (and maintain consistency of work) including the creation of new SC4S non-profit (e.g. ongoing training, appropriate infrastructure)

• Support community capacity building with Mother to Mother

• Support building capacity for Project NAF

• Support community outreach through Infant Mortality Education

• Create a “Better than living wage” paid apprentice and training and a paid internship and shadowing experience for Black women/birthing people  in our community

• Create a “Clinical Shift Toolkit” for participating MCH providers (clinical and social services) in WNC

• Dismantle Structural Racism at MAHEC through Equity Strategic Planning 

• Create a GME Wide Advocacy Curriculum for Medical Residents 

• Develop and Replicate Implicit Bias and other equity simulations and other for Medical Residents (Also part of the Advocacy Curriculum listed above)

• Provide resources and clinical and community connections to bolster the Success Equation’s existing advocacy work at local, regional, state and federal  levels as it aligns with the NC Perinatal Strategic Plan including the Advocacy Curriculum at MAHEC. (Policy Issues: Extending postpartum Medicaid; Medicaid transformation; early childhood programs; rental assistance/eviction prevention; Medicaid expansion) 

• Provide resources and leadership to support policies necessary to realize guidelines, funding, and sustainability for Community-Based doulas.

• Create a Housing Strategic Plan for Housing Insecure Pregnant/Postpartum Families in Mothering Asheville Community 

• Address NC state taxes on diapers through policy/advocacy for eliminating the diaper tax and having diapers covered by assistance such as WIC or Food Stamps (current efforts towards Diaper Vouchers instead of WIC/Food Assistance, see CA Voucher program)

Key CSII Goals:

Goal 1- Authentically engage community members and ground our collaborative birth equity and racial justice work in the experience and voice of impacted individuals, lift upthestory behind the curve, and build leadership capacity to shift the narrative.

Goal 2- Ignite community members into action to advance birth equity and undo racism across systems, informed by the CHIP action plan.

Goal 3- Re -design and expand our cross-sector shared data governance process to incorporate the voice of  community members collaborating with other cross-sector  partners to review, analyze, learn from shared data and build capacity across partners.

Progress Updates:

For Goal 1: We have created and embedded leaders in our partnership from the community sector to become the Community Engagement Specialists for the partnership. This has not only allowed us to give lift to these partners in ways we had not previously, but also has increased their ability to build relationships between their own organization and the community, as well as the overall work to eliminate inequities in Birth outcomes. 

For Goal 2: Additionally, we have also shifted the focus away from looking to create new community engagement techniques but to give lift to the community led initiatives that we already had. For instance, our partnership shifted focus to give lift to SistasCaring4Sistas Community based Doulas to start their own non-profit which will in turn shift to host the partnership as it is established. This move really is set to put the leadership in the hands of community instead of larger public health institutions. 

For Goal 3: We have reset strategic priorities for the partnership which will in turn lead to us developing new shared data and metric methods for the collaborative.

Overall, we have helped give lift to our most community based partners to start their own non-profit/business structure. In doing this we are supporting them in no longer being accountable to an institution that doesn’t have the same values. Additionally, we have continued to build capacity to grow the reach of the community leaders instead of the institutional partners.

Our greatest successes have been getting our doulas back into the hospital, helping to create the new business structure for SistasCaring4Sistas, and developing new strategic planning goals specific to understanding the connection between housing insecurity and adverse birth outcomes.

We refocused on creating our new priority outcomes and were able to not only to continue highlight work that was ongoing but also shine light on new emerging issues that the partnership overall can align together. Specifically, partners have set a new strategic priority particular to housing and birth outcome inequities. Additionally, we created a new graphic that highlights all of the pieces of this work.

Our partnership has facilitated a strong governance and leadership by putting forth the priorities and learnings from the community voices before the institution or organizational preferences. In July we had universal agreement across our partnerships to support the creation of a new nonprofit that has the ability to have room to do more racial justice work without the burdens of white supremacy. This leadership has caused us to pause and reflect on how we continue to dismantle these systems while still supporting the infrastructure for community led solutions