At age 15, Aisha Oliver visited the emergency room to remove an ovarian cyst and, after the procedure, was told she’d be unable to conceive.
But Oliver, an Austin Weekly News columnist and community engagement specialist for Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, became pregnant with her son her junior year at Columbia College Chicago.
“There was a lot of fear. Immediately, my body went into shock,” Oliver said.
It wasn’t just the shock of an unexpected pregnancy. It was the shock of whether she and her baby would survive, since Black women have one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the United States.
That’s why West Side United — a collaborative made up of six West Side hospitals to improve health in nearby neighborhoods — Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and the Chicago Westside Branch of the NAACP launched the West Side Healthy Parents & Babies program April 16. The program will provide free support from staff to answer questions and share resources with expecting and new parents through the first year of their child’s life. It was announced in conjunction with a panel discussion at Bethel New Life on North Lamon Avenue during Black Maternal Child Health Week.
Black women in Illinois are more than twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related conditions than white women are, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health’s 2023 Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Report. But the maternal mortality rate is nearly six times higher for Black women than white women in Chicago, Crain’s Chicago Business reported.
And when Black moms are at risk, so are their babies. The West Side experiences some of the highest numbers of both preterm births and low birth weight in the city, according to the Chicago Health Atlas.
“Next door in West Garfield Park, rates of low birth weight are nearly triple the rates in Lakeview,” said Ayesha Jaco, West Side United’s executive director. More than 17% of all babies born in West Garfield Park from 2017 to 2021 were under 5-and-a-half-pounds.
Over the same span of time, 58 infant deaths were reported in Austin, the highest number of any Chicago neighborhood.
“I can, off the top of my head, think of five of my cousins and other family members and friends who have been in danger in a hospital because of pulmonary embolisms right after birth, or other complications,” said Tyrina Newkirk, one of the panelists and a vice president of the Chicago West Side Branch of the NAACP. She asked the room to raise a hand if they or someone they knew had experienced similar complications, and about half of over 50 attendees did.
Why race matters in healthcare
While many components contribute to these statistics, factors include inequalities in healthcare, doctors’ biases and socioeconomic statuses, which impact access to housing and healthy food — all of which are seen on Chicago’s West Side after decades of systemic disinvestment from the area.
Oliver experienced this first hand. A white doctor told her she wouldn’t be able to conceive. But what the medical staff didn’t tell her was that when they removed her cyst, they also removed one of her ovaries.
Nathalie McCammon-Chase — a family physician at McCammon-Chase Total Wellness Center in Oak Park, another panelist April 16 and Oliver’s doctor since she was 14 — discovered Oliver’s singular ovary during an ultrasound. Oliver confirmed this through her medical records and was told that her ovary and cyst would be used for research.
“The only person that I would even want to sit in front of and trust was Doctor McCammon,” Oliver said.
Increasing access to Black medical professionals on the West Side was just one point that panelists touched on during discussion in order to help Black parents and babies.
Mai Heath, a naturopathic doctor and founding director of NDoula Community Alliance, said she wants to see a more holistic approach to healthcare for Black mothers. This includes more trauma-informed care, plus access to doulas and midwives, in addition to doctor office checkups.
“I like this idea of us moving away from having this biomedical supremacy and having more of a peer interaction,” Heath said. “These are some frameworks that some health institutions and some clinics are moving towards, and I think that those things are helping,” she said, both with patient comfort and trust.
Panelists mentioned doulas and midwife services several times throughout the panel.
Jeanne Sparrow, a show host for radio station V103 and the panel’s moderator, started the discussion with a story about her own relationship with midwives. Sparrow’s great grandmother and great aunt were midwives, delivering most of the babies in their South Louisiana community.
“This is something that we have always done, taking care of each other,” Sparrow said. “This is the community that we are talking about building on.”
“We are, as black women, trying to give birth in a system that was not designed for us,” Newkirk said. “We’re going to come across some challenges trying to give birth in a system that looks different from how we traditionally gave birth, in a more holistic, caring way.”
The West Side Healthy Parents & Babies program aims to provide access to holistic, caring healthcare, and started those efforts at the panel.
Dr. April Bellamy-Peyton, a retired pediatrician sitting next to a pregnant woman, stood up to introduce herself and the woman, and summarize their conversation before the panel.
“I asked her, did she get her prenatal care?” Bellamy-Peyton said to the room.
“No,” the pregnant woman answered into the microphone.
“I asked her, ‘Why?’ Bellamy-Peyton said.
The woman cried through her answer, “because I feel like, when I had my first son, I was going to die.”
Although the woman said she doesn’t have a primary care provider, she was connected to services through the West Side Healthy Parents & Babies program after the panel.
“I hope the registration, the QR code, the phone is ringing off the hook for this program to the point where we have to hire more people and more navigators and more advocates,” said Dr. Shawn Smith, a panelist who is also an attending physician at Lurie Children’s and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Vice President Kamala Harris even wrote a letter to applaud the new program.
“By facilitating access to essential resources, including prenatal and postpartum care, you are all playing a vital role in supporting our Nation’s most vulnerable and underserved communities,” Harris said in the statement. “Your work is creating an invaluable model for other organizations, cities and states to follow.”
The panel wrapped with a call to action for the room of attendees: “Think about the pregnant person in your life and how you are in support of them,” Newkirk said. “It looks like you showing up in spaces like this and taking that information back to other people. It looks like you finding a way to give your time, your expertise, because everyone is an expert in something.”
