Black Maternal Health Week 2024
April 11—17, 2024
Held annually on April 11-17th, BMHW is a week-long campaign founded and led by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance to build awareness, activism, and community-building to amplify the voices, perspectives and lived experiences of Black Mamas and birthing people.
Black Maternal Health Week was founded in 2017. Take a look back in this article.
The Black Maternal Health Movement is led by and for Black Mama's and always has been! To find out what's happening in New Mexico for #BMHW24, please see below.
Our bodies STILL belong to us: Reproductive Justice NOW!
Photo: Black Mamas Matter Alliance
Meet the Women Fighting to Save Black Mothers: 'There's a Lot of Work to Do’
“Black women are also more likely to have a stillbirth, give birth prematurely, have low birth-weight infants, have a miscarriage even. There are a lot of challenges that folks are dealing with,” Black Mamas Matter Alliance co-director Elizabeth Dawes Gay tells PEOPLE. “It boils down to toxic stress, racism in society, in the healthcare setting, disparities in access to care. There’s a lot of work to do. I think we will see a change but it is going to take a long time.”
That’s why Black maternal health advocates are trying to raise more consistent awareness about birth outcomes and establish policy changes to close what is known as the Black-white gap. One example is Black Mamas Matter Alliance’s Black Maternal Health Week, an effort to shed light on the challenges and opportunities in the fight for Black women’s maternal and reproductive justice.
Credit: People.com