Description
Prison and jail systems in Wisconsin have not been built to adequately address women’s health, pregnancy, childbirth, or postpartum care. Justice-involved pregnant and postpartum people face gaps in prenatal care despite their increased chance of having significant risk factors during pregnancy. These significant risk factors during pregnancy include substance abuse, mental illness, and chronic disease. People with significant risk factors during pregnancy are more likely to have poor birth outcomes compared to the general population. These poor birth outcomes include delivering low birth weight babies and suffering high rates of postpartum depression. One way to address these health inequities is to involve doulas in the care of justice-involved pregnant and postpartum people. Perinatal doula support has been shown to contribute to improving health outcomes and the birthing experience. Doula-centered care has also been found to be beneficial for low-income women, and to reduce stress, anxiety, and pain experienced by patients.
A Co-Design Doula Project for Justice-Involved Pregnant and Postpartum People aims to identify barriers and facilitators to providing and sustaining high-quality, comprehensive perinatal care for justice-involved pregnant and postpartum people in Wisconsin. Using group concept mapping and co-design principles, barriers and facilitators were identified by people with lived experience being pregnant while they were incarcerated, doulas, and peer support specialists. The long-term goal of the project is to develop a doula program for incarcerated individuals to improve health outcomes for birthing people and their babies. The overall objective is to understand the necessary priorities to design a successful doula program.
Specific Aims
Aim 1: To develop a framework demonstrating the domains of an ideal doula program for persons incarcerated and experiencing pregnancy or the postpartum period in Wisconsin’s prisons and jails.
Aim 2: Identify the highest priority needs of persons incarcerated and experiencing pregnancy or the postpartum period in Wisconsin’s prisons and jails.
Aim 3: Obtain pilot data to co-design a pilot project using doulas to meet the perinatal care needs of persons who are incarcerated while pregnant in Wisconsin.
Research Project Team
Project Funding
- UWSMPH Department of Pediatrics R&D Grant