Black Maternal Health Event Set For April 17th

Gabrielle Richmond is the Founder of She Is Heard. Photo provided by Gabrielle Richmond.
Gabrielle Richmond is the Founder of She Is Heard. Photo provided by Gabrielle Richmond.

Black Maternal Health Event Set For April 17th

By Tia Carol Jones

Gabriel Richmond founded She Is Heard as a podcast in 2023, with the purpose of giving women a voice in relation to infertility, maternal health and the birth experience. Richmond realized women needed community, in addition to the conversations she was engaging in with the podcast.

She expanded She Is Heard to include events, as well as meaningful conversations through the podcast, as a way to provide tangible resources, education and in-person support to women and couples who needed it. Richmond and She is Heard will host the Rooted & Resilient Black Maternal Health Wellness Event from 6 p.m.  to 9:30 p.m. on Friday, April 17th, at the Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, located at 1250 W. 119th St.

Richmond said the event will be trauma-informed to honor the intensity, severity and complexity of the Black maternal health epidemic that is happening in the United States currently. She said the space will be a one-stop shop for hope, healing, education, resources and community. She said any aspiring, expectant or current parents and mothers are encouraged to attend the event.

She said that sometimes the journey to motherhood and parenthood can be a silent journey and that people are suffering in silence with their maternal and reproductive health issues and maybe dealing with infertility, pregnancy loss or even postpartum.

“I want people to leave knowing that they’re not alone in this journey,” she said. “We want the people to come and get these resources, get the knowledge from the panel, the resources from the vendors and leave with community.”

The panel will include an OB/GYN of 30 years, who will share her experience of being in underserved communities, and being on the ground seeing the disparities that exist in Black and brown communities. A doula will be on the panel to discuss the importance of having a doula in the room when a person is giving birth. A mother of two, who experienced postpartum, will be on the panel. There will be a fertility specialist on the panel who has also been on their own journey with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Richmond will also be on the panel, sharing her testimony and how she took her health into her own hands and healed herself using herbs.

“I think it’s important for people to see themselves in the panel,” Richmond said. “We have a very comprehensive panel, so hopefully, everyone who walks through those doors can see themselves in the panel.”

Richmond said when the podcast first started back in 2023, she noticed the conversations she was having were leading to healing and hope. She said people needed to feel heard and she was intentional with the conversations she was having on the podcast. She said the podcasts and the discussions taking place on them are very powerful. She said the events, community and advocacy are all being tied together to bring about meaningful conversations around maternal health, infertility and birth experiences.

Richmond said it is important to have conversations around Black maternal health because the statistics are staggering. She shared that Black women in the United States are three times more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than white women. She also shared that more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are actually considered preventable.

She added that 80% of Black women will develop fibroids by age 50. She said those statistics are alarming and that is why She Is Heard and the Rooted & Resilient Black Maternal Health Wellness Event are needed, because they shed light on what is happening in the community. She said that she hopes that by having conversations around Black maternal health there will be a change.

Richmond said that people in the community can support the work She Is Heard is doing, by becoming a sponsor for events or donating to the organization. For more information about She Is Heard, visit www.sheisheard.org or email info@sheisheard.org. You can also follow @sheisheard_ on Instagram.

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