Overview

Hi, My name is Kiersten TâLéigh "Gillette" GP. I'm the Founder & CEO of In the Tradition of Our Ancestors, LLC., a holistic wellness store that wants to address extreme conditions with extreme solutions. Currently, no birth centers in Baton Rouge cater to birthing people of African descent–honestly, for Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) folks in general. Furthermore, no birth centers in the state intentionally make their centers a welcoming space to birthing individuals and their families in a non-cisheteronormative environment that is trauma-informed, culturally responsive, accessible to differently-abled persons, and rooted in a gender-conscious, Pan-African tradition. In the Tradition of Our Ancestors (ITOA) Birth & Holistic Wellness Center aims to change that!

In owning and operating Baton Rouge's first Black-owned birth center, we will not only fill a gap and provide much needed and sought after Black birthing person-centered care, but we will also create an opportunity for community engagement and connection to ancestral practices. The birth center will also be the home of ITOA's holistic wellness services, in which holistic herbal remedies and spiritual technologies will complement the clinical medicine provided by midwives and non-clinical doula and lactation support staff.

The Ask

We are asking all in support of community-led and operated institutions and facilities to donate to our GoFundMe to help us make ITOA Birth & Holistic Wellness Center come to fruition. We need $165,000 to buy the property, renovate it, get it up to code, and officially open its doors to Baton Rouge and surrounding communities. Please help us show up for our Black birthing folks and their families!

The Situation--Expanded

Pregnancy-related and -associated mortality and morbidity in Louisiana are among the highest in the nation. According to the Louisiana Department of Health, four Black birthing persons die from a pregnancy-related or associated cause for every white birthing person. While Black birthing individuals represent only 37% of pregnant Louisianans, they represent almost 60% of perinatal deaths (Dyer et al., 2022). What's more, 59% of perinatal deaths among Black birthing persons were preventable, compared to just 9% of perinatal deaths among their white counterparts (Mehta et al., 2020).

While popular media may try to place blame on Black birthing individuals and their communities, it has long been debunked that it is racism–not race–that has driven the national Black perinatal health crisis. Systemic, structural, and interpersonal racism increases risks for adverse pregnancy and other health outcomes among Black birthing persons. Moreover, living in a "concentrated deprivation" neighborhood, or predominantly low-income, Black community, increases the risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes not because the area has a lot of Black folks but because of the lack of investment in this predominantly Black community. While we may automatically think of potholes only being in Black areas of town and constant improvements to the areas primarily populated by white folks, the lack of investment goes beyond roads. It stretches into limited access to quality education, employment opportunities, healthy foods, and health care (Dyer et al., 2022). So, Black birthing people are more likely to live in "underinvested" communities with fewer resources and less social infrastructure. Living in areas like this can also lead to a higher level of chronic conditions–like high blood pressure–that can develop before pregnancy and lead to an even higher risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes (Dyer et al., 2022).

Many parishes in Louisiana are classified as maternity care deserts, or areas that have a lack of access and availability of perinatal health care, causing delays in entry to prenatal care, increased travel time to obtain care, and ultimately increasing the risk for the birthing individual and the neonate (Wallace et al., 2020). Living in a maternity care desert in Louisiana increases the risk of pregnancy-associated deaths by 91% compared to parishes with access to this life-saving care–it even increases pregnancy-related deaths threefold! (Wallace et al., 2020).

While East Baton Rouge Parish has access to several perinatal care options, especially for individuals within Baton Rouge city limits, access and availability do not equal culturally responsive care and services. It has been evidenced that obstetric racism and disrespectful care play an essential part in the disparate birthing outcomes among Black individuals in Louisiana and the US. Despite efforts at the state level, the Black-white disparities remain essentially unchanged. Additionally, in a state that continues to push for draconian legislature to rollback protections for birthing persons of transgender and gender-diverse experience as well as access to the full suite of sexual and reproductive health care services–including safe abortion access and care–we must also take the threat of losing already restricted access to obstetric services into consideration. Moreover, evidence shows that parishes with more significant numbers of Black birthing persons are more likely to have obstetric services stripped away from their care; this could be devastating for Black communities in Baton Rouge and surrounding areas as they are already experiencing layers of anti-Black systemic racism and oppression, losing those services would only further the racial divide and increase the severity of racial inequities in pregnancy and birth outcomes (Wallace et al., 2020). To prevent birth-related complications for birthing individuals and infants, Black communities must have access to sustained, high-quality preconception, intrapartum, perinatal, and postpartum care (Wallace et al., 2020). While East Baton Rouge Parish has access to pregnancy and reproductive health care, it is surrounded by parishes that are classified as having limited access or no access at all (e.g., West Feliciana, East Feliciana, St. Helena, Livingston, Ascension, and Iberville parishes) (Wallace et al., 2020).

We must implement alternative solutions now instead of waiting for our right to care to be further attacked before we act. We cannot wait for the government to work. We must create sustainable solutions that are community-driven. Interventions rooted in a life-course approach informed by gender-inclusive Pan-Africanism, reproductive justice, and birth justice are needed to impact the well-being of Black birthing persons and their communities. Only this could address reproductive health disparities through a community-driven approach to early life disadvantages through lifelong adverse experiences due to structural racism–e.g., neighborhood poverty, crime, segregation, and anti-Black racism (Dyer et al., 2019).