Inglewood Community Doula Training Program

Health care access

West LA South Bay

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Los Angeles is facing a maternal health crisis, with mortality rates highest among BIPOC women. Among these populations, maternal mortality rates are up to four times higher than those of White women and infant mortality rates are up to three times higher than those of White infants. Nowhere is this disparity more apparent than in Inglewood, where 89% of the population is Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino and where perinatal health outcomes face tremendous risks. Today, there is only one maternity ward serving Inglewood, following the closure of two other maternity wards since 2020. In addition to reduced access to care, racism and chronic stress continue to harm BIPOC women’s birthing experiences and outcomes.
To address the crisis, California added doula services as a Medi-Cal benefit in 2023. Yet these services remain underutilized, in large part due to a shortage of doulas—limiting access to a proven support that could help address persistent disparities in maternal care.

We will support prospective doulas who identify as BIPOC (and others), through training, reflective support groups, certification, and employment and/or launching entrepreneurial private practices. Using the successful collaborative creation model we’ve used to build other Clinic innovations, our BIPOC Doula Job Training Coordinator will co-design the culturally aware curriculum, ongoing reflective support groups, and business incubation workshops in collaboration with doulas, parents, community groups, and experts. With the help of this network and our existing Inglewood clinic and Early Head Start programs, we will recruit prospective doulas by offering learning sessions and thoughtful self-selection tools. Because one of the biggest advantages to becoming a doula in California is also a sizeable hurdle, our business incubation workshops will help graduating doulas complete the Medi-Cal ‘PAVE’ application to access CA’s high provider reimbursement rates, while offering free/low-cost care to the community. The project itself will be will be nested in comprehensive supports at our ‘cradle-to-career’ Inglewood Crenshaw Children and Family Center, a new hub for whole-family care featuring on-site career training (including new doula training), as well as comprehensive health and mental health care, doula and lactation support, Early Head Start, specialized play groups, and free fresh food markets—with care managed in real-time by multi-disciplinary family care teams.

Our new Doula Training Program will increase the number of BIPOC and bilingual doulas in Los Angeles as well as promote doulas as essential members of labor and delivery teams. As our existing Doula Referral Program (using a doula agency) has already demonstrated, when doulas are paired with pregnant parents, birth outcomes improve and racial disparities decrease for BIPOC families. Just as importantly, newly trained doulas will gain economic mobility through employment—and with our business incubator workshops, many will go on to establish their own practices, earning a minimum of $3,263 per birth under Medi-Cal. In the first year, we will train 35 doulas and increase access to doula care for at least 180 parents and newborns. In subsequent years, we will refine and scale the model across our service area to help ensure more families in Los Angeles have access to doula care, making dignity and support standard for every birth.