Current and Former Grantees

Ayan Maternity Health Care Support provides culturally relevant wrap-around perinatal support services and professional development opportunities to East African immigrants and refugees in King County. Their project will include a six-week perinatal class on pregnancy and wellness, labor and delivery, maternal mental health, and preparing for parenthood. They will use the grant funds to provide their doula services, lactation support, childbirth education, and early parenting support to clients. Funds will also support annual workshops to build workforce capacity and educational opportunities for East African doulas.

BLKBRY offers culturally responsive, evidence and practice-based interventions to reduce the effects of structural racism to families in the Burien area. BLKBRY strives to fill the gaps of missing culturally responsive care and resources in Black reproductive, perinatal, lactation support, and Black infant and toddler health care. This grant funding will support no-cost classes for Black pregnant and birthing people and access to Black-owned reproductive and perinatal products. BLKBRY will use the funds for continuing staff education, expand doula and lactation support to Black pregnant and birthing families, and cultivate community spaces to support and share information about birthing work.

Nisqually Tribal Health and Wellness Center serves American Indian/Alaska Natives living in Thurston County and Nisqually Tribal Members and their families. They plan to expand their perinatal health services to include postpartum doula care, group prenatal care classes, lactation education, dental program, and Traditional Healing program. Their project will launch new initiatives, including training birth workers on Indigenous Lactation Counseling and developing a new perinatal mental health program.

Shades of Motherhood serves Black mothers and other people of color and their infants in Spokane, supporting people to overcome barriers to care and health equity. Shades of Motherhood centers Black mothers and birthing people through education, empowerment, and community to reduce health inequities. Their program will expand access to peer support, childbirth education, lactation support, reproductive support, perinatal mental health support groups, and birthing and perinatal supplies. They will also host community outreach events to help connect Black families to resources and promote birth equity awareness in the Spokane community.

Spokane Tribal Network is working to improve reproductive health in rural and urban areas in and around Spokane. The Spokane Tribal Network is a non-profit based on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Through this partnership, their project will support doula services to urban and rural families, ceremonial training, and birth advocacy. They will also offer pre-natal and postpartum culture-based group care to pregnant American Indian/Alaska Native families. Grant funds will help support interested American Indian/Alaska Native community members to become doulas, birth advocates, and ceremonial mentors.

Forks Community Hospital has focused on increasing prenatal and parenting supports for rural and tribal families. The hospital provides the Centering Pregnancy group prenatal program and prenatal yoga classes. Their Celebrating Families program focuses on pregnant and parenting families with substance use disorders. Forks has partnered with the Quileute, Hoh, and Makah tribes to offer these services to tribal families. Program successes included:

• Their Centering Pregnancy program reached 40 total birthing persons, 38 of whom were actively enrolled on their delivery date.
• Enrollment from the local Mam community, which has historically been noted to have lower rates of access to prenatal care services.
• 84% of the Centering Pregnancy participants accessed prenatal care during their first trimester. While this is a small sample, 84% is higher than the rate in Clallam County from 2020 (69%) as well as the WA overall rate (75%).

Korean Woman’s Association (KWA) has developed and implemented a Culturally Responsive Integrated and Strength-based Parenthood (CRISP) parenting class for Black/African American, and Pacific Islander families. KWA has partnered with organizations such as Greater Destiny COGIC, Multicultural Child and Family Hope Center, and Asia Pacific Cultural Center in Pierce County to offer these classes in Pierce County. Program successes included:

• 269 unique parents and caregivers participated in the CRISP program.
• CRISP participants who were pregnant received additional care coordination services through KWA or their network of partners.
• 83% of CRISP pregnant participants gave birth on time to a healthy weight infant and 53% were from priority populations.

Tulalip Tribe has launched the Family Spirit home visiting program, a tribal doula training program, and offered tribal lactation services training. The home visiting program provides high-risk prenatal and postpartum case management to parents in need. Program successes include:

• 36 total clients were served in the program, including 25 total actives pregnancies through to birth and 6 repeat clients who returned for multiple pregnancies.
• During the final year of the program, Tulalip Tribes’ staff were averaging 38 visits with clientele per quarter for an average active caseload of 12 pregnancies.
• Three doulas were trained and certified, including two from tribal communities.
• Tulalip Tribes shared their work through a new Instagram channel and through local news articles:​​
  • Introducing the Maternal Infant Health Program - Tulalip NewsTulalip News
  • Mother’s Milk: The importance of breastfeeding - Tulalip NewsTulalip News

Global Perinatal Services has expanded their services for Black birthing families in King County. These wraparound services include childbirth education classes, pre-and postnatal lactation education, doula services, and parent support groups.

Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice (ALFJ) is a community-based doula group specializing in Queer Trans People of Color (QTPOC) issues. With BEP funds they were able to offer a 5-day doula training to 19 people in Washington on topics that included: birthing parent rights, supporting birthing people who have had gender-affirming surgery, and supporting birthing people as they navigate the use of hormones.

Whole Body Pregnancy is a holistic doula community-based organization that provides post-partum doula services, post-partum doula training, and childbirth education training. With these funds, 61 people were able to attend the 12 session Whole Body Pregnancy’s childbirth education training.

Pacific Island Health Board of WA (PIHB) is a non-profit that seeks to cultivate resilience in Pacific Islander communities through culturally safe and community driven solutions, traditions, advocacy, and policies. With BEP funds, PIHB was able to provide formula and lactation education to Pacific Islander families from around the state.

Center for Indigenous Midwifery offers support to the indigenous community of Washington State through indigenous doula care, midwifery assistant training, midwifery workshops, lactation support, and childbirth education. With BEP funds, they were able to provide formula, lactation support, and lactation education workshops to American Indian/Alaska Native families around the state.