Black Maternal Health Week: Family and Community Care from Womb to Block
Each April, Black Maternal Health Week calls national attention to one of the most persistent public health inequities in the United States. Black women remain three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, regardless of income or education. A significant portion of these deaths happen weeks or even months after childbirth, highlighting longstanding gaps in postpartum care and the broader social conditions that shape maternal health outcomes.
In response to these realities, Divine Harlem, a community-rooted maternal health initiative based in Harlem and working across New York City, has developed a framework we describe as “Womb to Block.” This model recognizes that maternal health is shaped not only by prenatal and delivery care, but also by the strength of family relationships, neighborhood support systems, and community infrastructure surrounding birth.
Improving maternal health outcomes requires both clinical innovation and community-centered solutions. When families are supported, when communities are resourced, and when maternal health is approached as a shared responsibility, we move closer to a future where every mother has the support she needs to not only survive pregnancy, but also to thrive beyond it.
Partnerships are essential in sustaining and expanding this work. Support from organizations such as Fidelis Care, through maternal health grant initiatives, strengthens outreach efforts and helps connect families to healthcare coverage, education, and services that support healthy pregnancies and postpartum recovery.
Public health research increasingly demonstrates that maternal health cannot be understood as a purely clinical issue. Structural factors including racial bias in healthcare, fragmented postpartum care systems, housing instability, economic precarity, and chronic stress play a profound role in maternal morbidity and mortality. These realities require solutions that extend beyond hospitals and clinics into the social environments where families live, work, and raise children.
Divine Harlem works to strengthen this broader ecosystem of care through family-centered programming designed to support mothers, fathers, youth, and emerging birth workers. Our Youth Doula Training Program introduces young people to reproductive justice education, birth work skills, and community health leadership, helping cultivate the next generation of maternal health advocates and culturally responsive birth workers.
We also facilitate Father Healing Circles and men’s retreats, creating spaces where fathers and partners can process their experiences, strengthen their role in supporting mothers, and deepen their understanding of family wellbeing during pregnancy and early childhood. These spaces recognize that paternal engagement and emotional healing are essential components of healthy family systems.
If we are serious about addressing maternal health disparities, we must invest not only in healthcare systems, but in the community ecosystems that sustain families before, during, and long after birth.
Community-based models such as the Womb to Block framework emerging from Divine Harlem offer one pathway toward building that future.