Rooted in Justice and Joy: BWHI Shows Up for Black Maternal Health Week 2026

Black Maternal Health Week 2026 is wrapping up, and BWHI has been everywhere it needed to be. On the ground. In the halls of Congress. In community spaces. In honest conversations with the people doing the work every single day. This week, we showed up fully, and here is a look at everything we did and why it matters.

We Signed On. We Stood Up.

BWHI proudly added our name to the 2026 Black Maternal Health Week Resolution, led by Representative Alma Adams, Representative Lauren Underwood, and Senator Cory Booker, calling on Congress to stop treating Black maternal health like a talking point and start treating it like the crisis it is. We also joined the Black Mamas Matter Alliance’s community block party and walk, standing shoulder to shoulder with the movement that has been centering Black birthing people for a decade.

As Dr. Ifeoma Udoh, our Executive Vice President of Policy and Research, put it: “All Black mothers and families deserve safe and joyful pregnancy and postpartum experiences. We proudly stand alongside the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, whose leadership drives Black Maternal Health Week, as a call to action to address structural and social conditions, including structural racism, that undergird Black maternal health. This Black Maternal Health Week, we center justice and joy, and continue to urge federal and state congressional leaders to commit to the comprehensive solutions outlined in the Momnibus Act.”

That is not a press release statement. That is a commitment we have been living for more than 40 years.

On Capitol Hill with Congresswoman Robin Kelly

This week, BWHI President and CEO Joy D. Calloway, M.B.A., M.H.S.A. stood on Capitol Hill alongside Congresswoman Robin Kelly to sound the alarm on Black maternal health. The press conference spotlighted two critical pieces of legislation: the CARE for Moms Act and the WELLS Act, both of which reflect the kind of comprehensive, equity-centered policy BWHI has championed for decades.

Joy’s message was clear and grounded. Black women are still dying at rates that are unacceptable and preventable. A healthy pregnancy does not start at conception. It starts with a woman who has been cared for her whole life. BWHI’s policy priorities have always centered access to high-quality maternal care, a strong perinatal workforce, and chronic disease prevention across the full life spectrum. That has not changed, and neither has our commitment to fighting for it in every room we are invited into and every room we have to push our way into.

The Conversation We Had with Birth In Color

BWHI Senior Director of Policy Candace Bond-Theriault sat down with Kenda Denia, Founder and Executive Director of Birth In Color, and Dana Williams, Senior Program Director, for a real conversation about what it actually takes to change Black maternal health outcomes.

Kenda made something clear that does not get said enough. The data on Black maternal mortality cuts across education and income levels. “When you look at the statistics and data, you see that women with a higher education status are dying at a higher rate than people with a high school diploma. And so we have to really hold people accountable.”

The conversation also touched on the critical and often overlooked role of doulas, and how community-based support is not a luxury. It is infrastructure. Dana spoke to the importance of sustaining that workforce: “To truly support our doulas, we need policies that value and sustain this workforce. That would include fair Medicaid reimbursements for doulas, access to mental health care.”

Birth In Color’s annual summit, held this week, brought together policymakers, clinicians, and community members to talk accountability, data, and the community-driven solutions that are already working.

Candace, who attended in person, reflected on what the partnership means: “I’ve had the privilege to be fully immersed in bread and butter kitchen table conversations about Black maternal health. As a Virginian, and a Black mother who recently gave birth to my two beautiful children, these important conversations move beyond politics and hit home.”

Why Georgia’s Midwifery Lawsuit Is a Black Maternal Health Story

One of the most powerful conversations we had this week was with Jamarah Amani, a licensed midwife, birth justice advocate, and co-founder of the National Black Midwives Alliance. Jamarah has been waiting 18 years for Georgia to change its laws. This year, she stopped waiting.

Her origin story is personal and it is political. When she gave birth to her second child in Georgia, midwifery care was inaccessible and unaffordable, so she went through the Medicaid system and ended up in a hospital where her autonomy was stripped away. “The denial of freedom of movement made me feel more like a prisoner than a patient. I definitely didn’t feel cared for. It felt like I had to fight during my labor.”

That experience, combined with a lifetime of reproductive justice activism, became the foundation of her calling. She trained in Florida because Georgia law gave her no other choice, and now she is bringing that fight back home. On April 2nd, she filed Amani v. Georgia alongside two other midwives, with the support of the Center for Reproductive Rights, challenging some of the most restrictive midwifery laws in the country.

But Jamarah did not stop at the lawsuit. She gave us history. And it is history that every Black woman deserves to know.

Black midwives were the primary care providers for pregnancy for most of this country’s history, serving Black, white, and Indigenous families alike. In Florida alone, at the start of the 20th century, there were 4,000 registered midwives and 98% of them were Black. Then came a deliberate campaign to dismantle them. Beginning in 1857, the American Medical Association launched what Jamarah calls “a racist and sexist campaign to discredit Black midwives,” and by 1921, a nursing degree requirement effectively pushed out an entire workforce that was barred from those same schools because of segregation. Georgia’s laws today are a continuation of that legacy, and that is exactly why Jamarah is taking the state to court. “We deserve the right to reclaim what was stolen from us.”

We will continue to follow this lawsuit and the women who are seeking change in Georgia. Read More

The Work Continues

This week was Black Maternal Health Week. But this work does not have a deadline. BWHI’s policy and research team are deep in it every single day. Our partnerships with organizations like BMMA, Birth In Color and advocates like Jamarah Amani are not one-week collaborations. They are part of a long-term movement to make sure Black mothers feel safe, seen, and able to come home to their babies.

That is the world we are building. And we are not building it alone.

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