Pritzker pitches more than $20 million for initiatives to improve Black maternal health

Jeanine Valrie Logan is working to open a birth center inside a former church on Chicago’s South Side, where there’s a dearth of options to have a baby. Valrie Logan is a Black midwife. She envisions three rooms in the birth center where people can have their babies in an intimate space, as well as an upstairs clinic where patients — including those who aren’t pregnant — can have routine reproductive medical care. But the church could be expensive to renovate — $3 million, Valrie Logan estimates, including equipment and furniture. As a nonprofit without big investors, she hopes to apply for money Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wants to designate toward improving Black maternal health, calling it “monumental.” “It’s been hard to be honest,” Valrie Logan said. “We have a solution. We don’t have the funds for that solution.” Pritzker wants to allocate more than $20 million in his proposed state budget to reduce health disparities and help prevent more Black women from dying before, during and after childbirth. He’s set to give his budget address on Wednesday, kicking off a round of negotiations for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The money for birth equity initiatives would help...