It’s Black Maternal Health Week, and some healthcare workers are shining a spotlight on the disparities that happen in the Black maternal health space and the efforts to change that.
Nationally, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Florida, it’s worse.
“The hospital is the place we are supposed to go to give birth. This is the place that we have, for decades and decades, welcomed babies into the world,” said Sarah Foster, co-chair of the Central Florida Birth Network. “It feels more like a big gap in understanding or education of what those experiences are going to be once they actually show up in those spaces. It's not what it has been portrayed on social media or in the movies and TV shows.”
Across the country, the pregnancy-related morbidity rate is about 24 deaths per 100,000 births, according to a report by the March of Dimes. In Florida, mothers face about 25 deaths. State data shows that in 2023, for Black women, it was 53.3 deaths per 100,000 births.
On Sunday, Foster hosted a community round table for Black Maternal Health Week. The presentation featured a midwife, a pediatrician, a mental health professional, as well as doulas and educators sharing their experiences in the black maternal health space.
A common theme each speaker addressed was the importance of shared decision-making and making these decisions in plain language.
“Most pregnant people are not trained in medical speech,” Foster said. “They're not trained in any of this language. So if they're feeling off, it would behoove a medical provider to dig a little bit deeper and ask, well, what feels off?”
However, miscommunications in the labor and delivery unit can turn traumatic. Sunday’s round table engaged in a discussion with one doula, Keshia Lockett of Orlando, serving a mother at the time of giving birth. The mother was threatened with Child Protective Services after denying a medical procedure she did not want and was forced into.
Foster said that’s not an uncommon story. In many cases, hospitals will operate outside of a patient’s preference to maintain hospital policies, insurance rules, and guidelines against malpractice suits. The issue, Foster said, is that many of these guidelines are based on studies that don’t document Black maternal experience and what Black mothers encounter as patients. It creates a disconnect and sometimes a recipe for trauma.
“The systems, unfortunately, in place are creating this barrier where the providers want to be involved and they want to provide care, but they can't do it unless it's within that box,” Foster said.
Foster’s hope is for an embrace of community-based care to fill the gap where that maternal health system is lacking, a case-by-case “person-centered” approach for delivering care or services.
“Where we're seeing those disparities and folks not being acknowledged, or folks not being taken seriously. Community-based care steps in and fills that gap to make it a little bit easier for folks to access [care],” she said.
“The Fourth Trimester Program”
A few years ago, AdventHealth reviewed its own maternal data outcomes. It found that Black and African American mothers were being readmitted following cesarean section delivery at significantly higher rates than white mothers. Postpartum high blood pressure was the leading cause of re-admission.
On top of that, those mothers faced an increased risk of stroke and heart attack.
In 2023, the hospital network responded with its Fourth Trimester Program at its Orlando campus.
“The fourth trimester is the time from delivery until 12 weeks postpartum, a very vulnerable time in the life of a postpartum person,” said Dr. Rizwana Fareeduddin, chief medical officer of AdventHealth for Women and founder of the program.
The program utilizes “coordinators” who contact Black mothers who had a C-section, weekly for 12 weeks. The coordinators have non-clinical backgrounds, but receive postpartum doula training. Coordinators make sure the mothers have their blood pressure medication and blood pressure cuffs, and they provide education and help with whatever specific needs the mothers have.
Sometimes that includes providing diapers, assisting with the utility electric bill, or even providing ride share vouchers to get to a hospital appointment.
“One of the top barriers to access to care is transportation,” Fareeduddin said. “That's what we see in that national data, so we weren't too surprised to see that within our own community as well, and realizing we had to figure out a way to meet that need.”
Between Dec. 2023 and Oct. 2025, the program saw a 40% reduction in readmissions from Black mothers who had C-sections, Fareeduddin said.
“It has been really remarkable to see,” she said.
The program has expanded to AdventHealth’s Celebration campus, but Fareduddin hopes to see the program expand to more campuses as well as to the Spanish-speaking population.
“It'd be our dream to connect women with cardiology care, with primary care colleagues, so that we can manage their blood pressure and any downshift effects prior to the next pregnancy and really look out for their long-term health,” Fareeduddin said.
