Taking private grief and transforming it into public action

Saleemah McNeil remembers when she was 19, giving birth and coming out of labor the survivor of a traumatic birth experience. Now, the Oshun Family Center she founded as a consequence of that, is leading Philadelphia’s plans for the seventh annual national Black Maternal Health Week (BMHW) which runs April 11 – 17. For Black women, giving birth carries with it a risk of death three times higher than it is for white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the week is intended to bring a national spotlight to what is needed to keep Black women from dying or experiencing serious medical problems during childbirth. “My son had a traumatic entry into earth and it was really hard (for me),” McNeil said. While she had family support, McNeil didn’t have the mental health resources she truly needed to cope with the trauma, so she decided to train as a reproductive psychotherapist and to create the resources she wished she had had — at Oshun Family Center every therapist is trained in treating perinatal mood and anxiety disorders in a culturally sensitive way. Raising awareness of a crisis The Black maternal mortality public health crisis has...