What U.S. Birth Professionals Need to Understand About ICWA
The Indian Child Welfare Act – why is that relevant to my practice? The laws concerning children’s rights changed earlier this year. Although standards vary among the 544 tribal nations recognized by...
View ArticleTake a Doula Training, Change the World
Almost ten years ago I noticed many happy participants at the end of trainings but few people actually went on to become doulas. Being a researcher I decided to do a study, which was recently published...
View ArticleCareer Minded Participants in Birth Doula Trainings
Its natural to assume everyone in your birth doula training was there to become a doula. Not so! Only about half the people are there because they want to do labor support as birth doulas. What else...
View Article“To Heal and Protect”: Attending Birth Doula Trainings for Personal Reasons
A small but influential group of people attend birth doula trainings not to become doulas, nurses or midwives, nor to positively influence births in other jobs, but to help heal from their own birth...
View ArticleIt’s Your Turn to Make Doula History
Amy Gilliland, Madison Area Birth Assistants booth, Oct 1993, Madison Women’s Expo Lately I’ve thought a lot about what’s left after someone is gone – and who tells their story. It has made me really...
View ArticleThere’s 67 Different Doula Training Organizations! Uh oh! Or maybe not?
Recently, Kim James of DoulaMatch.net reported that birth and postpartum doulas have listed 67 different training organizations in their online profiles. Why are there so many? What are the...
View ArticleWho Are You And Why Should I Listen To What You Have To Say?
Demands for transparency in science and accountability for potential bias in researchers are relevant to doulas because so much of what we do is research driven. People want to know who is generating...
View ArticleWhy Don’t We Have The Doula Research We Need? Part I of IV
The Cochrane Collaboration updated their doula research review this year. They added four, only FOUR new studies – and none of them advanced our research conclusions in any significant way. Birth...
View ArticleWhy The Doula Research We Need Doesn’t Exist: Part II – Medical Politics and...
As a young woman, I naively thought that the evidence was so overwhelming that we’d steadily see doula research in major medical journals. Nursing and medical students working on research degrees would...
View ArticleDoula Research Part III – Barriers To Approvals, Funding And Publishing Access
Most people don’t know much about the research process or how difficult and time consuming it can be to publish in a peer reviewed journal. This essay exposes the barriers that are unique to publishing...
View ArticleHow the U.S. Women’s Movements Influence The Lack of Doula Research, Part IV...
The last major influence on why there isn’t pressure for more birth doula support research is that it doesn’t fit neatly into a feminist or women centered agenda in the United States. During the...
View ArticleCareful Now! The Black Pregnant Body is NOT Defective
Recent press has spotlighted the tragedy of more Black women and babies dying than Whites in the United States. It has amplified the voices of Black women and allowed more people to hear their stories....
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