"Well Mama" Maternal Health Limited Series | Birth Equity with Kelly Davis, MPA

SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity. In this episode we spoke with Kelly Davis, MPA who is co-founder and Chief Equity Officer at KINSHIFT. KINSHIFT supports healthcare and public health transformation through evidence-based practices rooted in actionable principles of trauma-and-resilience-informed care and anti-racism. She's also the former Chief of Birth Equity Innovation at the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC), which creates solutions to optimize Black maternal and infant health. Prior to NBEC, Ms. Davis led a series of innovative initiatives for the NYC Health Department (DOHMH). During her tenure at DOHMH, Ms. Davis led healthy eating and active living initiatives and served as one of the founding members of the Center for Health Equity, where she conceptualized the Family Wellness Suites, community respite and healing spaces for parents and children. Ms. Davis also spearheaded planning, implementation and oversight of several special initiatives, including the City’s first HIV public awareness campaign totally focused on women and a maternal morbidity and mortality initiative supporting 14 maternity hospitals in a long-term institutional transformation process that addresses structural racism, bias, resilience, and trauma-informed care. RESOURCES: - Physician-patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns. (2020) https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/35/21194.full.pdf - Black Maternal Health Research Re-Envisioned: Best Practices for the Conduct of Research With, For, and By Black Mamas. https://harvardlpr.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/11/BMMA-Research-Working-Group.pdf - The Cycle to Respectful Care: A Qualitative Approach to the Creation of an Actionable Framework to Address Maternal Outcome Disparities. (2021) https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/9/4933/htm