Black women expecting babies in Riverside County will be eligible for a new financial-support program that’s part of a growing movement meant to address maternal health disparities.
Launched in June 2021 by the city of San Francisco and the nonprofit Expecting Justice, the Abundant Birth Project provided $1,000 a month to Black and Pacific Islander women during their pregnancy and for the first six months of their babies’ lives. The program was the first of its kind, with a goal of alleviating financial pressures facing women of color that could lead to poor health outcomes.
Come 2023, the program is getting bolstered with a $5 million grant from the state’s Department of Social Services. It will expand from 150 participants to 425 who live in Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles and Riverside counties, as well as San Francisco. Here, the Riverside Community Health Foundation will serve as the local partner to help Expecting Justice administer the program.
It’s a novel experiment that zeroes in on the connection between financial stability, systematic racism and maternal health.
“Ample evidence points to socioeconomic status as a fundamental determinant of poor health, and it is one key contributor to Black-white disparities in birth outcomes,” Dr. Zea Malawa, director of Expecting Justice, told the Independent. “Yet there is a paucity of interventions that attempt to directly alleviate poverty and financial stress as a means to improve birth equity.”
Once the program is up and running, interested participants will be able to apply and be entered into a random drawing if they meet eligibility requirements. Selected participants will receive an income supplement of $600 to $1,000 each month via debit cards that automatically reload every month.
Data is not yet available on health outcomes from the first round, as just a third of the enrolled residents have completed it so far. The goal is that the extra resources will alleviate financial stress that mothers-to-be are experiencing so they can prioritize their well-being.
“We know that economic stress may be particularly acute during pregnancy, a period when income is volatile, and families experience changes in housing, employment, and health-care and child-care costs,” Malawa said. “For most of this country’s history, Black families have been systematically excluded from economic opportunity, resulting in a significant and persistent racial wealth gap. As a result, Black families are more vulnerable to this economic stress during pregnancy.”
That stress can have devastating consequences. For example, Black women are twice as likely than white women to have a preterm birth, which can lead to death or lifelong health problems. And pregnancy-related mortality rates among Black women are more than three times higher than white women, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a news release that she hopes the program will become a “model to address racial birth disparities throughout the region and state, and across the country.”
Unfortunately, attempts like this to help others often result in unfair criticism in the divisive digital public square. In this case, news reports about the program yielded Facebook comments that reeked of white privilege and spewed racist connotations—like people saying it should be offered to anyone regardless of their race, or claiming it’s “discrimination” to not offer it to poor white mothers.
A $5 million program will only help so many households—but based on its findings, the Abundant Birth Project could inspire further changes to social programs that do wind up helping more families.
While it’s certainly true that people across many communities need social safety nets and basic health support in this country, criticizing this particular program for offering a targeted intervention fails to acknowledge the underlying inequity it is trying to solve. Through redlining, school segregation and myriad institutional biases, our country has historically put economic roadblocks in front of people of color that can lead to negative health outcomes for their families. A program like the Abundant Birth Project has the ability to put resources where they can have the most impact.
And at a base level, it is unsettling to see people chide an attempt to help several hundred children get a better head start in life. It’s costing 0.0016% of the state budget. I’m an expectant mama, so maybe I’m sensitive to the topic, but shouldn’t we be rooting for the well-being of families?
It is true, though, that a $5 million program will only help so many households—but based on its findings, the Abundant Birth Project could inspire further changes to social programs that do wind up helping more families.
Malawa acknowledged that one program won’t change the realities of our society overnight. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
“No single solution will reverse the decades of systematic practices by government, financial institutions and employers based in structural racism that created and widened the income inequality experienced today by California’s Black communities,” she said, “Nevertheless, a paradigm shift is required to address longstanding maternal and infant health disparities.”
