04/15/2026
Black Maternal Health Week, held each year from April 11 to 17, calls you to face the truth and act with intention.
Every two minutes, a woman dies from pregnancy or childbirth. Black women carry a far heavier burden. In the United States, Black women are about three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. This is a systems failure, not a personal one.
You cannot claim to support Black maternal health while excluding the very people who have sustained it for generations.
Midwives save lives. That includes nurse midwives, certified professional midwives, and traditional midwives. Especially traditional midwives. These are the birth keepers who hold ancestral knowledge, who serve communities often ignored by formal systems, who provide care that is continuous, culturally grounded, and deeply relational.
When you limit midwifery to only what is recognised by institutions, you narrow access. You strip families of choice. You erase practices that have kept Black and Indigenous communities alive long before modern medicine entered the room.
If you want safer births, you invest in all pathways of midwifery care. You protect traditional midwives. You fund their work. You create systems that allow them to practise freely and safely alongside other providers.
At Rooted in Wisdom, this is what we stand on. We train birth workers. We support families. We build community care that does not begin and end in a hospital room.
Black maternal health is about access. It is about respect. It is about restoring what has always worked.
Support the work. Fund the care. Protect the midwives.
