In a bold move to address one of America’s most persistent healthcare crises, Chicago Beyond has launched a groundbreaking fellowship initiative, committing $2 million to support four exceptional birth workers dedicated to improving Black maternal health outcomes nationwide.
The national philanthropic organization, which has invested more than $65 million in over 200 individuals and organizations since its founding in 2016, selected four remarkable leaders for its Fellowship for Black Maternal Health: Jamarah Amani, Executive Director of Southern Birth Justice Network (Miami, Florida); Nikki Hunter-Greenaway, Founder of Bloom Maternal Health(Houston, Texas); Femeika Elliott, Founder of The Lotus Program Experience(Knoxville, Tennessee); and Soraya DosSantos, Founder and Project Director of Sacred Birthing Village(New Bedford, Massachusetts).
Each fellow will receive $500,000 in unrestricted funding over three years, strategic resources and capacity-building support—a transformative investment in a field where practitioners often struggle for recognition and sustainable funding.
“This fellowship really means the world to me,” says Amani. “I know that the impact it’s going to have, and is already having in my community, is raising awareness, amplifying our issues, and providing more resources to support me in continuing this work. I know that this fellowship is going to have a generational impact,” she tells ESSENCE.
Inspired by the urgent call from birth justice leaders and alarming CDC statistics showing Black women in the United States are three times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women. Chicago Beyond committed to the fellowship at the 2023 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. The organization designed the initiative after extensive consultation with elders in the field, policy visionaries and birth workers themselves.
“Chicago Beyond’s interest in addressing the maternal mortality crisis has truly been years in the making, along with our work to highlight some of the alarming disparities in Chicago,” explains Liz Dozier, founder and CEO of the organization. “The idea is to support work of distinctive leaders across the country who have first-hand experience in the field, which oftentimes I think is not lifted up enough in terms of what it should be in a larger conversation.”
Unlike traditional funding models that often come with restrictive guidelines, Chicago Beyond’s approach represents a shift toward trust-based philanthropy, allowing these frontline experts to direct resources where they’re most needed.
“For too long, grassroots organizations like mine have been doing the work without the resources. This fellowship allows us to bridge hospital care and community care, ensuring that no mother is left behind,” says Hunter-Greenaway.
“This is truly an investment in birth workers who are making great impacts in the field of perinatal health,” Amani explains. “A lot of times, the people who are on the ground doing the work are not supported financially and resourced to do the work. We’re often digging into our own pockets and utilizing whatever is available in our communities—making something out of nothing.”
“What we heard time and time again in every single conversation was this idea of unrestricted funding and support,”Dozier shared. “Our goal with the resources and with highlighting this is to truly shift power, to shift resources, to cause people to think differently, and ultimately to do differently,” she tells ESSENCE.
Addressing Root Causes
The initiative comes at a critical moment. Despite increased national attention on maternal health, the crisis continues to deepen for Black women, regardless of education or income level.
“What we face is not a crisis of our bodies, but a crisis of violent systems that seek to erase us, pathologize us, and profit from our pain,” says DosSantos. “This is not new. But what is revolutionary is the way we are reclaiming our divinity, demanding justice, and radically designing new worlds. What Chicago Beyond is doing with this fellowship is not charity — it is correction. It is an act of restoration.”
“One thing that I continue to have to dispel is that money and economics and income are the reasons that Black birthing people are at higher risk,” Amani pointed out. “If you compare a PhD, college-educated, high-income Black woman with a white woman who is considered low income and didn’t finish high school, that white woman actually has the chance of having a better outcome.”
Elliott spoke to the urgent need for community-based interventions, particularly in states like Tennessee, where she says, “most of the mortality is happening during the postpartum period between 30 and 365 days postpartum”—exactly when many birthing people fall through the cracks of conventional healthcare.
Expanding Capacity, Restoring Traditions
The fellows have ambitious plans for their funding. Elliott, whose work intersects food, reproductive health and regenerative medicine, plans to hire another postpartum professional and invest in other birth workers in her community.
“I feel like we are in a very unique time, and this fellowship was truly right on time with everything that’s happening,”Elliott shared. “As birth workers, we often think about sustainability and how we’re going to continue the work and expand our access to care for our community. This investment allows me to continue to invest in the communities that I serve, here in Knoxville and even outside of Knoxville, as we continue to do the work.”
Amani is focusing on addressing a critical workforce shortage. “Black midwives only make up about five to seven percent of the midwife workforce,” she explained. “I’m most excited to invest in the next generation of Black midwives and to support Black midwife students in being successful with completing their education, their training, and becoming certified and licensed practitioners in their communities.”
Her vision extends internationally: “I’m also really invested in building a bridge between Black midwives in the United States and Black midwives in the continent of Africa,” through cultural midwifery exchange programs that honor ancestral practices and knowledge.
Bridging Gaps in Care
These maternal health leaders emphasized the need for collaborative approaches that bridge community-based care with conventional medical systems.
“A misconception that I get often is that we cannot coexist with people in the medical industrial complex, and it’s not true,” Elliott noted. “We would like to work to bridge the gap, but sometimes we are seen as threats. We’re on the ground, spending most of the time with these families, with these mothers, and we know them best.”
Chicago Beyond’s initiative comes as maternal healthcare access is declining across the country, with hospital labor and delivery units closing and out-of-hospital care options diminishing—particularly affecting Black communities.
A Movement for Generational Change
The fellowship represents more than just funding—it recognizes the essential role of community-based birth workers in addressing systemic healthcare inequities.
“Health disparities are power disparities,” Amani emphasized. “Until we really get to addressing that, we’re going to continue to have this misconception that if we throw money at the problem, it solves the problem. Money helps us create solutions because it builds in sustainability, but we really need to change so much about the roots of racism in this society.”
With Chicago Beyond’s historic investment, these practitioners now have unprecedented resources to create models of care that could transform outcomes not just for today’s expectant mothers, but for generations to come—honoring what Elliott described as their ancestors’ legacy: “Our ancestors birth this nation. Our ancestors literally birth children that weren’t theirs. These are original practices that we’re bringing back.”
As this initiative unfolds over the next three years, it aims to demonstrate how targeted, trust-based investment in community leaders can create pathways toward health equity in ways that conventional healthcare systems have yet to achieve.