ACURE4Moms

Our study’s Co-Principal Investigators are Drs. Jennifer Tang and Rachel Urrutia of UNC’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, whose work is focused on addressing inequities in maternal healthcare. They will be supported by several other UNC Co-Investigators who bring with them extensive knowledge, experiences, and resources toward the project, including Dr. Sam Cykert, Dr. Kate Menard, Dr. Wanda Nicholson, and Dr. Marcella Boynton. Members of UNC’s Collaborative for Maternal and Infant Health (CMIH) will also be greatly involved through the course of the study, including Co-Investigator Sarah Verbiest. We will be relying on individuals from UNC’s Sheps Center for all our data management, analysis, and IT needs.

Momma’s Village Fayetteville (MVF) is a nonprofit community organization based in Fayetteville, NC providing Doula care, lactation support, holistic maternal mental health support, culturally -focused birthing & parenting education, and support & advocacy work for Black and brown families. They are one of our doula partners for this study and will be leading the community-based doula training and oversight in Eastern NC. Their founder, Angela Malloy, is also a Co-Investigator for this study.

MAAME, Inc. located in Durham North Carolina empowers Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other Birthing People of color and those historically excluded to navigate systems during pregnancy and postpartum, mobilize to offer resources, education, services, and support for holistic maternal health, wellness, sustainable communities, and economic advancement. Their founder, Maya Jackson, is also a Co-Investigator for this study.

MAHEC serves North Carolina’s 16 western counties and is involved with training and retaining healthcare professionals, especially in rural areas. The MAHEC team, which include Amanda Brickhouse-Murphy and Dolly Byrd, have been leaders in offering a race-equity-centered approach to OB care and for this study are involved in the creation of our Maternal Health Equity Education Trainings for practice staff, a racial equity curriculum specific to our project. They will also help implement our project interventions at practices in the Western NC area, such as Charlotte.

NC AHEC is proud to be a collaborative partner in this important study aimed at advancing maternal health care in North Carolina. We recognize the challenges practices face in addressing factors that impact patient care and outcomes, and have positioned our Practice Support Facilitators to help. The Practice Facilitators are trained to work with OB/GYN practices to help them make meaningful changes to improve birth outcomes. One way they do this is to help practices use data dashboards to promote timely intervention when there are changes in a mother’s key health indicator, such as blood pressure, which is known to impact a baby’s birth weight. The Practice Facilitators can assist practices to identify and follow up on missed appointments and tests that are recommended for pregnant moms. Timely intervention, along with recognizing and addressing care gaps, can significantly help reduce the chances of delivering a low birth weight baby which in turn reduces chances of a baby dying or having ongoing developmental and chronic health problems.

The NC Health Information Exchange Authority was made by the state of North Carolina to facilitate the creation of a modernized health information exchange (HIE) to better serve NC’s health care providers and their patients. A health information exchange (HIE) is a secure, electronic network that gives authorized health care providers the ability to access and share health-related information across a statewide information highway. For our project, the NC HIEA will help create our data interventions, the Perinatal Equity Dashboard and the Maternal Warning System, and will be involved in collecting data for analysis.

Team members from the: NC HIEA.

The ACURE4Moms study will be directed and guided by the Stakeholder Advisory Accountability Board Leading with Equity (STABLE). This group will ensure community participation in the development and progress of the ACURE4Moms study and act as an accountability partner for the Research Team. They will provide oversight on study design and dissemination and will advise on the development of material and study proceedings.

STABLE will be Co-Chaired by a Research Stakeholder, Christina Yongue, and a Doula Stakeholder, Brittany Curry. STABLE includes patients of color who have experienced low birthweight (LBW) or severe maternal mortality (SMM), Community-Based Doulas, and representatives from the NC Division of Public Health, NC Women’s Health Branch, (WHB), NC Medicaid, NC Maternal Health Innovations (MHI) Provider Support Network, the Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative (GHDC), OB practices, commercial payers (BCBS/Anthem, United, Wellcare), patient advocacy groups like MomsRising, and professional organizations, like the American College of Nurse-Midwives and the NC Obstetrical & Gynecological Society.

Team members from the: NC HIEA.

Momma’s Village Fayetteville is a Community-Based Doula group based out of Fayetteville, North Carolina.

You can learn more about our Eastern North Carolina Doulas, get to know each person, the sites they practice, and their partnership at MVF at mommasvillage.com.

Angela Tatum

ACURE4Moms Eastern Doula Lead

Jasmine Johnson

ACURE4Moms Eastern Doula Team Project Manager

Taylor Johnson

Somariya Jackson

Genesis Banks

Quay Roache

Eboni Allen

Eva Charles

Iriana Kay

Nicole Collins

Precious McKendall

Taya Partin

MAAME, Inc. is a Community-Based Doula group based out of Durham, North Carolina.

You can learn more about our Western North Carolina Doulas, get to know each person, the sites they practice, and their partnership at MAAME, Inc. at MAAMEInc.org/.

Maya Jackson

ACURE4Moms Western Doula Lead

Brooke Rucker

Owner/Founder of Essentially Yours Doula Services

Cassey Mapp-Ahmed

Owner/Founder of Village Sis Doula, LLC

Denawa Alberti

Khalilah Moore

Nakia Clark

Qua Sharpe

Owner/Founder of Birthing A Better You

Sha’irah Khyah

Shatrell Mack

Owner/Founder of Yuhnique Organics & Doula Services LLC

Shayla Rhem

Tiara Morris

Owner/ Founder of Total Maternal Support

We know that patients who identify as Black experience discrimination during pregnancy care in North Carolina and the United States. Sadly, this means that Black patients are more likely to have bad outcomes during pregnancy, childbirth, or in the year after having their babies. ACURE4Moms was created to understand the experiences from patients like you. We hope that this project leads to improved outcomes for patients who identify as Black and others. 

To be eligible to take part in the surveys and interview, you must be:

• Black or African American
• 15 years old or older
• Between 14 and 23 weeks of pregnancy
• English, Spanish, or French speaker

Additional qualifiers may apply, including accessibility to a phone or web-based platform. You must be receiving pregnancy care at one of our participating clinics.

A community-based member of the ACURE4Moms team working with your clinic will reach out to you to schedule a time to talk about the surveys and interviews. This team member will ask you some questions to see if you are eligible and will tell you more about the project. If you are eligible and you want to join, the team member will then ask for your consent to join.

You can choose whether you want to participate or not. Your choice is confidential and will not be shared beyond the ACURE4Moms team. Your choice will not change your care from the clinic.

ACURE4Moms’s goal is to sign up about 4,400 people across North Carolina in the survey and to interview about 100 people. Everyone’s survey and interview responses will be grouped together, and the study team will review the responses to see if the two ACURE4Moms programs had an impact on discrimination, medical care, and emotional experiences during and after pregnancy.

Like most research projects, ACURE4Moms will share its findings through conferences and publications. Your personal information will not be used in any report or presentation. Instead, your responses will be grouped with other responses.

If you’re interested in receiving updates about what we learn from the project, including the surveys and interview, please complete this form.

ACURE4Moms is a research study trying to reduce:

• low birthweight babies
• emergency department visits and hospitalizations for birthing persons and their babies
• depression among birthing people
• discrimination in pregnancy-related care

ACURE4Moms is trying out 2 programs designed by people who have given birth. These programs include:

1. Sharing patient data and warning alerts with clinic staff to keep them accountable for their patients’ outcomes and providing tools to help them reduce bias in care.
2. Matching eligible patients with doulas from the same community as the patients.

ACURE4Moms randomly chose prenatal clinics to receive one, both, or neither of these programs. After each clinic has tried these programs for 2 years, we will see how the programs worked.