LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has created a hub for doulas to make it easier for people to connect with the birth workers and to get them connected with health care services.
This move comes on the heels of state legislation being enacted to allow doulas to become a Medi-Cal reimbursed providers.
Creating a hub of doulas in Los Angeles was a motion introduced by Supervisor Holly Mitchell.
She joined “Inside the Issues” host Alex Cohen to talk about the new hub.
Doulas specialize in helping women and families throughout a woman’s pregnancy. They advise on how to reduce stress and pain-reliving techniques during pregnancy, function as an advocate during delivery, and help support with other needs during postpartum.
“We wanted to really create an infrastructure to support a really seamless entry for doulas into Medi-Cal,” Mitchell said.
By creating a hub, Mitchell says this will help doulas get access to more hospitals, establishes a system that can be operationalized as soon as the state finishes its implementation of expanding Medi-Cal to doulas, and it will help doulas navigate the complicated system of Medi-Cal for providers.
As the access to doulas expands, another area Mitchell hopes to address through the new hub is creating more diversity in the birth worker industry.
“I think it will open up not only the beneficiaries who will be able to receive the coveted doula service, but it will also create an opportunity for others to enter the space knowing that a whole bevy of insurance plans will begin to cover the services,” Mitchell said.
Another issue the LA Board of Supervisors is looking at is reparations for Black people in the county for historical wrongs done to the community by state programs.
In order to address these issues, Mitchell started a racial justice learning exchange program to provide a space for people in her community to come together to discuss how to address the rise in racist attacks on different groups.
“We realized we need to create safe spaces to talk, listen, and learn about difference,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell sees the benefit in having these shared spaces, is it allows for common ground to be reached for when it comes to talking about the reparations.
“From our perspective, reparations is acknowledging and paying for past work,” Mitchell said. “We know that enslaved Americans helped build this country. Everything from the literal construction of our White House to the tobacco and cotton industries to the railroad industry; the foundations of our democracy and our economy.”
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