June 2021 has been filled us with hope as we look forward to Summer and to loosening COVID restrictions. We are thrilled to announce that children are now welcomed to join us during visits! Updated Best Start COVID GUIDELINES.
Best Start will be adopting Juneteenth as a recognized holiday. We are honored to share our anniversary (6-19-1989) with such a special day commemorating the end of slavery in America. Since the birth of Best Start Birth Center in 1989, we have been fighting to ensure that every woman has access to evidence-based midwifery care delivered with compassion.
Black women in the United States are three times as likely as white women to die from preventable pregnancy-related causes. This is true for Black women across ALL income and education levels. This tells us something more nefarious is to blame—a long history of implicit bias and institutional racism. The cause of these inequities is not race, but racism.
When seeking maternity care in hospitals across California, Black women are facing healthcare providers that do not communicate with them properly, treat them unfairly, and push for more medical intervention than the women are comfortable with. Black women report feeling pressured to undergo inductions, utilize pain medication, and deliver via cesarean birth.
Birth Centers such as Best Start, have been shown to reduce outcome disparities for women of color.
Help us hold the system accountable.
• Reach out to your insurance company and let them know you want freestanding birth centers to be a covered option, so all women can have the opportunity to seek care with Midwives that embrace and empower them.
We look forward to a day when all women can get care, in any setting, with confidence that they will be treated fairly, accurately, and with compassion. Best Start stands with you. Your birth, your way. From 1989, always.
