“It’s not just the one-time individual situation,” Aina explains, citing recent incidents in which Black women were allegedly refused medical treatment while in active labor. In one case, mother Mercedes Wells was discharged from Franciscan Health Crown Point Hospital in Indiana by a nurse who said she wasn’t far enough along, only to give birth on the side of the road eight minutes later. She returned to the hospital a few days later due to post-birth complications. Following public reporting and backlash, Franciscan Health terminated both the nurse and physician involved in Wells’ case and implemented changes to its labor-and-delivery protocols.
Aina cites insurance payment models, under investment in women’s health research, and now, under the current U.S. presidential administration, the defunding of quality improvement initiatives as barriers to structural change. “It’s very systemic in the ways health care is provided in this country [and] the ways we value maternal healthcare,” she says.
Aina’s path to this work began when she was an undergraduate at Georgia State University, where she realized she wanted to focus on women’s health but decided against a traditional medical route. Instead, she went on to earn a Master’s in Public Health from the Morehouse School of Medicine and amassed years of public health experience, working for community organizations, state health departments, academic institutions, and the CDC.
Throughout her career, volunteering with grassroots reproductive justice organizations and African immigrant-serving groups in Atlanta, Aina noticed a pattern: Black women consistently developed innovative solutions to address community health needs, but rarely received the investment or resources to sustain them. “We always come up with the solutions and innovation,” she says, “but we’re never fully equipped with the investment and proper resources to actually do the work.”
It was that observation that pushed Aina to co-found the Black Mamas Matter Alliance in 2016. Aina describes its framework as simple but revolutionary: “Trust Black women, listen to Black women, and most importantly, invest in Black women.” Over the course of a decade of scholarship and organizing, BMMA has advocated for the creation of services to improve experiences and outcomes, including birth centers, wraparound service programs (coordinated support plans that bundle multiple services around one person or family), and reproductive justice clinics. “ These different types of models of community-based care [are] genuinely what’s needed to address these issues,” she says. “But they need to be funded, sustained, and valued.”
BMMA has published comprehensive policy agendas, created a “Black paper” (an answer to white papers) on holistic maternity care standards, and developed research methodologies rooted in treating study participants as collaborators rather than subjects. The Alliance is also a key force behind the Momnibus Act—a series of federal and state bills addressing maternal mortality through investments in social determinants of health, expanding Medicaid coverage, diversifying the perinatal workforce, and strengthening data collection and quality improvement programs.
Even as funding disappears and attacks on DEI initiatives and women’s health intensify, Aina is doubling down on community-building and supporting the health care workers on the front lines. BMMA’s theme for this year’s Black Maternal Health Week, coming up in April, is “Rooted in Justice and Joy,” Aina says. “We need both in this time period.”
For Aina, closing the equity gap isn’t just about improving statistics; it’s about recognizing that Black women have always known how to care for their communities. “When we center the people most impacted by these issues,” she says, “it has a positive effect on everybody.”
