Healthy Birth Louisiana

The Healthy Birth Louisiana (HBL) initiative began in 2019 with support from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation (BCBSLA). The initiative started with a close examination of Louisiana's birth outcomes, followed by a statewide tour identifying partners and allies for improving birth. Sista Midwife Productions (SMP) had been training doulas for over five years and was now on a mission to create more impact. SMP's vision, to train perinatal community health workers, to increase the numbers of culturally competent community birth workers across the state, came to fruition in April 2020 with the training of the first cohort of PCHW. In October, 13 individuals residing in Louisiana’s Health Department (LDH) Regions 7 and 8 completed their training and became the first set of individuals to receive a Healthy Birth Ambassador (HBA) certificate. Since then we have trained 50 individuals as Healthy Birth Ambassadors with representation from 7 of LDH’s 9 regions. Our vision is to ultimately train Healthy Birth Ambassadors™ for every region of the state to serve every parish of Louisiana where service is needed. (author description) #P4HEwebinarOctober2024