Biography:

Dr. Brittany Chambers Butcher is a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of California, Davis. She is a community health scientist whose program of research merges critical and public health theories to partner with Black women and birthing people to better understand, operationalize and dismantle racism. Dr. Chambers Butcher uses a community research model in her work to #listentoblackwomen to reconceptualize structural racism and the way it shows up in Black communities to contribute to adverse maternal and infant health outcomes. Building on this work, Dr. Chambers Butcher received a competitive two-year UCSF-Kaiser Permanente Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) K12 award to collect formative data to co-develop racial equity training for perinatal care providers with Black women and perinatal providers of color. She now was a K01 focused on pilot testing this racial equity training among perinatal providers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Solutions are in the Community: Centering Black Women’s Voices to Advance Birth Equity

Abstract:

Structural racism has been identified as a root cause of maternal and infant health inequities experienced by Black women and birthing people, and their children. In effort to better understand and dismantle racism, centering community voice is essential. This presentation will share a community research model used to advance birth equity and example projects implementing this model to: (1) develop a conceptual framework of structural racism from the perspectives of Black women; (2) develop and pilot test a racial equity training for perinatal care providers; and (3) developing a healing toolkit for community researchers.