- [Announcer] - Production and distribution of City Club forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (people chattering) - Hello.

(laughs) (people chattering) And welcome to the City Club of Cleveland.

(people chattering) All right, we're gonna start that over.

Hello, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, October 21st and I'm Kristen Baird Adams of PNC and President of the City Club Board of Directors.

I'm pleased to introduce today's forum, which is the Colleen Shaughnessy Memorial Forum and part of the City Club's Health Innovation series.

It's also part of our local heroes series, which spotlights champions here in northeast Ohio and our community, across our community, who change the way we see ourselves and the communities in which we live and work.

So it's particularly fitting and my honor to introduce our speaker, Jazmin Long, President and CEO of Birthing Beautiful Communities.

(audience clapping) As you may know, October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss awareness Month.

Nationally, up to one in four known pregnancies will end in miscarriage.

That means that each of us in this room, or listening in today, likely knows someone or has experienced pregnancy or infant loss.

Here in Cleveland, our infant mortality rate is one of the worst in the nation.

And according to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, Black babies are almost three times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies.

Despite some improvements in infant mortality, broadly, the infant mortality rate among Black babies has not significantly changed over the last decade.

Further, maternal mortality also has increased, particularly during the pandemic.

Yet, another statistic, disproportionately impacting women of color in a city recently ranked the worst in the nation for Black women.

With great passion, today's speaker, Jazmin Long, is on a mission to improve these unacceptable and painful statistics.

In 2021, Jazmin was announced as the president and CEO of Birthing Beautiful Communities, after serving as vice president of fund development.

In her role, she tackles the social determinants of health in real life circumstances that make mothers and their babies vulnerable to infant and maternal mortality.

Since 2014, Birthing Beautiful Communities has served our community by providing childbirth and parenting education workshops, breastfeeding support, nutritional guidance, doula training, medical advocacy and more.

Jazmin is a passionate and strategic leader with a deep knowledge of the healthcare and social services industries.

Before her current role, she served as a deputy director at Global Cleveland.

She is a graduate of the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences where she obtained a dual master's degree in social administration and non-profit management.

If you have questions for our speaker, you can text them to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet your questions @TheCityClub and the City Club staff will do its best to work them into the program.

Members, friends, and guests of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Jazmin Long.

(audience clapping) - Good afternoon, everyone.

It is really, really, really my pleasure to be before you all today.

As I look around this room, oh, get me together.

(laughing) (audience laughing) I am honored to see so many of my friends, colleagues and real true change makers in our community here today, so many of the people that make me proud to call Cleveland my home.

This is an iconic space for our city and beyond, and I intend to make the most of the time we have here together.

As you leave the room, I hope one of the things that you walk away from this conversation with is that I am a true champion and advocate for Black women in northeast Ohio and our babies and our families.

Now, Dan already touched upon that I broke every rule today and I did ask Cynthia if I was breaking the rules.

And she was nice and she said I wasn't, but I really was and it's okay, but I wanted to be able to see and talk to and hug and shake hands with everyone who took time out of their afternoon to come here and be with me today.

Again, in true trouble-making, good trouble-making mood, when I was looking at the City Club and looking at forums that they had for the month of October, I noticed that there was not a conversation that was gonna be focused on infant mortality, maternal mortality or infant loss.

And I reached out to Dan and I said, I wanna do a forum.

And I really expected him to politely tell me no because I'm sure he probably gets dozens and dozens of requests 'cause we all think we should host a City Club forum, right?

(all laughing) So I was expecting for him to say, oh, it has to go here, it has to go there.

We're not gonna be able to do it.

But really to my surprise, the City Club didn't have anything on this date and they were actually able to accommodate a forum.

And I really, really am grateful for the opportunity to stand before you today to talk about this important issue.

I am sending so much love, gratitude, support to the incredible women who work with me at Birthing Beautiful Communities, some who are in the room and some who are downstairs at Captivate Restaurant waiting for me to come hang out with them afterwards.

I am only here because of the incredible life-changing and life-saving work that they do every single solitary day.

I'm not really a person who often talks about myself or my journey because I really center the work and I center the women who have had experiences in infant loss and things such as that.

But I wanna talk to you today in the hopes that I might inspire you to push toward a more purpose-driven life as I have.

This year I celebrated my 10th anniversary of moving to Cleveland.

And that sounds strange to some because I know a lot of people think that I'm from Cleveland or I'm from northeast Ohio because I have built a lot of relationships, but I am a person who trusts her guts on things.

And so when a recruiter from Case came to my college, they said, people who are in the certificate program might have an interest in going to this social work program.

Now, I didn't really understand the vast nature of what a social worker could be, right?

I had this misconception, misperception, but I decided to go to the recruitment session anyway.

And so when I learned about the MSASSS program, I immediately said, this is where I'm going.

I applied for the program as early as I could.

I got in early and I knew that I was gonna participate in the macro social work.

But you see, from the time I was in third grade until the time I studied abroad in my junior year, I knew that I was going to law school.

That was my dream.

My mom who's in the room, who is laughing loudly, can attest to the fact, yeah, give her a round of applause.

(clapping) (audience clapping) She can attest to the fact that when I was in middle school, I sat down and I wrote this 12-year-plan for my life.

(audience laughing) And it talked about where I was going to high school, it talked about where I was going to college and it talked about the fact that I was going to Harvard for law school.

It had been my intention, but again, as I stated, I stayed aboard in South Africa and I had such a life-changing, life-affirming experience that I realized I never actually wanted to be a lawyer.

What I wanted to be was an advocate.

And the only profession that I had seen in an advocacy like role was an attorney.

I didn't know what it meant to be a change agent, macro social worker.

The mission of the Mandel School is advancing leadership in social work and nonprofit education, scholarship and service to build a more just world.

Now, I knew nothing about Cleveland.

I'm not a sports fan.

(audience laughing) I didn't know that the rock and Roll Hall of Fame was here.

I didn't know there was an arts and culture scene.

I knew not a single person in the state of Ohio or in the city of Cleveland when I decided to uproot myself and my mom and I got in the car and drove eight hours to move me here site unseen into a new apartment.

(audience murmuring) But what I did know was I wanted to learn about building a more just world.

And if this graduate program was gonna allow me to do that, then this is where I needed to be.

My MSASS journey is important because, you know, grad school is really different from undergrad, whereas you're not, living in close proximity to your colleagues and classmates.

You may be working full-time and going to school.

You may be doing internships.

So it's a whole totally different experience.

But for me, I made critical relationships with my classmates that really rooted me and decided to help me to remain in Cleveland.

My grad school experiences is what brought me face-to-face with the grave reality of infant mortality for so many in our community, particularly for Black mothers and families.

You see, during my time at MSASS, I encountered a friend and a student who was there who would become a friend and a sister for life, Samantha Pierce.

So back in the day, Sam would have these gumbo parties and it's exactly what it sounds like.

She would make two to three different kinds of pots of gumbo.

Her husband would put some meat on the grill and we would come over and have parties and eat food.

And of course, what graduate students who are away from home wanted more than a hot meal.

So we would come over and we would hang out and we would really enjoy our time there.

But one of the things that struck me immediately when I first got to Sam's house was this mantle display that she had and it was a picture of her and her husband with pregnancy and then there was like a memorial on the lantern.

And so I asked her, what's this for?

It was a memorial to her twins, Kristen and Jayden.

They passed away during Sam's fifth month of pregnancy with them.

And that was the first time that I had ever had someone be so open and transparent about an infant loss.

And it really started to shift the trajectory, I think, of my life.

In 2017, I kept hearing about the infant mortality crisis.

I talked to Michelle earlier and she said, we're becoming more and more hearing about infant mortality.

It's been a thing for hundreds of years in our community, but we're now really starting to hear about the harmful impact that infant mortality is having on our families.

So I became a doula.

I received a certification through DONA, which is the National Certifying Body for Doulas.

And I knew that I wanted to do something to help impact infant mortality.

I knew that doulas play a role in supporting mothers.

However, I would come to learn the difference between community-based doulas like the one BBC employees and the one that I was trained to be.

I graduated from MSASS in 2015 and decided to remain in Cleveland.

My relationship with my MSASS girlfriends continued on.

So one day, again, I was chatting with Sam and we were talking about infant mortality and my decision to become a doula.

She asked me if I knew about BBC and had I met the founder, Kristen.

I told her no and she made it her mission to make sure that I met her.

You see, Sam is a dramatic Aries like me and a rule breaker like me.

Sam is right there with the blue hair, if that says anything.

(audience laughing) And so she just made sure that this meeting was able to happen and it was able to occur.

So again, Case Western just kind of stays with me everywhere I go.

So the three of us actually met for coffee at the coffee shop on Case's campus.

And it was during this meeting I got to really learn about what BBC was doing in our community and I was overwhelmed and I was blown away.

And I started thinking, oh, maybe I could join their board or maybe I could be a doula for the organization, but I didn't think that I would actually be working there.

During the conversation, even funny enough, Kristen mentioned to me that the organization was gonna be hiring a director of development and I'm a pretty good fundraiser so I was like, okay, cool.

Sam can attest, I had absolutely no intention of applying for this job.

I was not interested.

I was really, really, really happy with my then time employment working under Joe Cimperman at Global Cleveland.

You see, Joe's the best boss that I had ever had and I really didn't wanna leave him.

I was really enjoying what I was able to learn and do at Global Cleveland and the impact that we were making.

So cut to maybe two, three months later, I continued hearing about infant mortality and my close friend, Evelyn Burnett, was the board chair for Birthing Beautiful Communities at the time.

And I went to her house and she was sharing with me, that they still hadn't found a candidate.

And I should think about maybe applying 'cause they really needed somebody who was strong in fundraising for the role.

Still didn't apply.

(laughs) My MSASS girlfriend Shayna, who's here today as well, caught me at a particular time when I was really disappointed about how bad our infant mortality crisis were and reproductive justice things were going on.

And she said, Jazmin, you really should think about applying to Birthing Beautiful Communities.

You'll be a really, really, really great fit for the role.

So I did recognize that I am good at fundraising, I knew doula work intricately and I am an incredible advocate and champion for Black women in northeast Ohio.

So after so many people asking me and suggesting that I applied, I did.

And I remember leaving that first interview and I said, oh, this is my job.

I have to work here.

I have to to do this.

And I wanna pause here to say that when I step back and look at this journey, I'm incredibly indebted to that driven middle schooler.

But I'm also grateful for the support of my family, my friends, my village, that has encouraged me all the way through.

Part of my draw to Birthing Beautiful Communities was the fact that I could be a part of building a village for women that needed it, that I could see the work of my hands materialized right here in my own community and it really is the most fulfilling work I have ever been a part of.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Birthing Beautiful Communities, the organization was founded in 2014 with the mission of addressing and improving the systemic structures that lead to poor birth outcomes, through culture, education, advocacy, support and engagement, cease.

At Birthing Beautiful Communities, our team of doulas works hard to ensure the foundation of life for the first thousand days, that it's healthy for our moms, babies and their families.

This means that every woman in our community has access to free perinatal support services.

Our approach to care and support those who need us most has been proven to save lives, build families, and to provide a more secure future for our families and our community.

So what are doulas?

We are sisters, we are friends, we are community members and we are sometimes the only support that our clients have in their birthing experience.

We are non-clinical birth workers who are trained to provide physical, emotional, and informational support to pregnant people in the prenatal, birth and postpartum periods.

For example, doulas may help create birth plans, advocate for pregnant people during their appointments and provide important work such as breath work, massage, techniques during labor and birth ball practices and things such as that.

We really try to ensure that moms can have the birth of their choice.

There are four key attributes to the role of a doula.

We provide information about childbirth and foster communications between our client and members of the care team.

They play an advocacy role.

They provide practical support through drug-free comfort measures and hand-on support.

And they provide emotional support for confidence in that moms feel that they're in control of their birthing process.

At Birthing Beautiful Communities, our community-based doulas go above and beyond what a traditional doula does.

And I know this intimately because I was trained as a donor doula and so when I was a donor doula, you go maybe one or two appointments before your client has their baby.

You attend their labor and delivery.

And you may attend one postpartum visit if they have paid for those services.

Again, everything is on a figure of what you pay for your services.

Now, Birthing Beautiful Communities, our doulas are with our client anywhere from eight weeks pregnant until the time their baby is one-year-old.

These services are completely free.

We provide full scale wraparound services.

They attend as many appointments as their clients need them to attend.

They provide childbirth education for the entire family.

They encourage and support breastfeeding.

They also ensure that moms understand what their doctors are saying.

Pregnancy can be a really vulnerable time for women or anyone, right?

And I would ask us to all think about a time when we went to a doctor's appointment and we had a burning question, but we felt ashamed, embarrassed, afraid to ask.

A doctor said something to you that you didn't understand, but you didn't sound as though you were uneducated so you didn't ask that question.

What we encourage our moms to do is to be intentional.

So thinking about that even before they get into the hospital, encouraging them to ask three questions at each appointment.

if you have a question, to clarify that, to get it clarified for you.

And that's what the doulas are there.

I often joke, I'm like, we need doulas just for all type of doctors, right?

So that you have someone being an advocate for you and letting you know, there are no stupid questions.

It's your health, it's your body.

And then additionally, we've been talking a lot about this as well, is ensuring that people know that they can change their doctors, that they can get a second opinion on things.

People don't often recognize that the doctor isn't always right and so we are there to provide that kind of support.

Our doulas are associated with improved maternal health outcomes and lower rates of medical intervention and birth.

They provide critical advocacy and support, especially for those at-risk of bias and discrimination.

Now I wanna say, community-based doulas and midwives, while not the lone solution for the maternal crisis, we are a huge solution and we play a critical role in improving outcomes and experiences for Black communities, simply put.

Multiple studies conducted even including some at Birthing Beautiful Communities, which are on our website, available for viewing, show that people who have doulas have better outcomes, lower birth rates, I'm sorry, lower low birth rate babies, less health complications, lower cesarean rates, lower preterm births.

And we know that we are really a great intervention to ensure that moms and babies are able to be healthy.

There are also several studies.

So I'm a fundraiser and I also have to do work at both the city and state level to encourage funding for doulas.

And there are also several studies that talk about the cost savings alone of having doulas by reducing the incidences of NICU birth, I mean, excuse me, babies having to spend time in the NICU.

The narrative around infant mortality is generally associated with poverty, low maternal education, poor healthcare, and a lack of adequate prenatal care.

However, studies have shown that affluence, high maternal education, insurance do not protect African American mothers from poor pregnancy outcomes or infant mortality.

An Institute of Medicine report found that the risk of preterm birth in college educated African-American women was greater than that for white women who had fewer than eight years of education.

Now this is a concept that I tend to struggle with, right?

Because are we saying, sometimes you hear these people say that, oh, high income women can lose their babies too, but if they were low income, does that mean they deserve to lose their babies?

No woman deserves to lose their baby.

(audience clapping) No woman.

(audience clapping) Now, this crisis cannot be adequately addressed without first understanding and then dismantling racism and bias in the healthcare system.

African Americans have endured hundreds of years of racism in this country.

This has occurred within various systems and institutions that are part of American society of which healthcare is just one.

Racism, not race itself, is the driving force behind high rates of maternal and infant deaths amongst African Americans and the systemic barriers that are viewed both by explicit and implicit bias.

Applying a racial justice lens to contextualize this urgent public health crisis is critical.

Put simply, structural racism compromises health, the health of individuals, but also our community in our region, as a whole.

Structural racism is defined as a system where public policies, institutional practices and cultural representations of work, work to reinforce and perpetuate racial inequity.

It is viewed by predominantly white power structures that perpetuate power imbalances amongst people of color.

Policy solutions to the maternal and infant mortality crisis must be grounded in a social justice framework, one that is intentional and is designed to address these systems and power imbalances.

Why do we do this work, right?

And I often speak and I try to speak in a joyous way because there is joy in our work.

When I'm with my team, we are laughing all day.

When we're with the moms that we're serving, we are providing them with critical skills that they need.

We're there to help and we're there to really put a different lens on this kind of work.

But we do this because the loss of a child before his or her first birthday is something that no parent should have to experience.

Yet in our community, it happens all too frequently.

In 2020, although Black births accounted for 37% of births in our region, they accounted for 73% of infant deaths.

I want you to just take that number and that was in 2020.

So when we think about that number, it is staggering and it should let us know that in northeast Ohio, we are still failing Black moms and Black babies.

It is for this reason that Birthing Beautiful Communities has been explicit since our inception in this region that we have a Black infant mortality crisis, that we are explicit in our service provision and that we go beyond providing the emotional support to expected moms.

We are really dealing with traumas.

We're dealing with hurt communities and coming out of Covid, we're dealing with people who are in some of the most challenging behavioral health positions that we have ever experienced.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing racial injustice movement highlighted the long-standing disparities for people of color in our community.

And one of the things that we were able to do is join in partnership with our sisters at Village of Healing and Pregnant with Possibilities Resource Center to form a collaborative called Black Birth Matter.

Our organizations are the three Black-led, Black-serving maternal health organizations in northeast Ohio.

And we wanted to come together to really make an ecosystem.

So oftentimes, philanthropy can say, well why can't Birthing Beautiful Communities just do everything.

And it happens, right?

And the answer is that we can't do it all and we can't do it alone and we shouldn't be expected to do it all and we shouldn't be expected to do it alone.

(audience clapping) We are so incredibly grateful to the Cleveland Foundation for a recent grant that they just gave us that's going to allow us to work on a strategic plan together so that we can really lay out what this ecosystem looks like in northeast Ohio so that we can save more moms and save more babies in our community.

Today, BBC continues to experience a great deal of growth as it transitions from a grassroots into a more professionalized organization.

In the first half of 2020, 2022, excuse me, we experienced a 50% increase in referrals for expected moms in the needs of our service from community partners that are including hospitals, community organizations, and even funders are sending people our way.

BBC is on the path to growth but recognizes that there is still work to be done.

To that end, we are currently serving 717 pregnant and postpartum clients.

Our staff has has nearly tripled.

We have the highest number of doulas we've ever had.

We have 38 doulas.

We have about 20 full-time staff members.

And as more people recognize the important roles that doulas play in the lives of birthing families, we have also trained an additional 50 doulas who go out into the community and provide services for others as well.

As our organization has grown and people realize how truly impactful doulas are in reducing infant mortality, we are really proud to share some of the partnerships we have in the community.

And I think it's important to share in the context of us as Birthing Beautiful Communities.

But even looking at the way that we are going to be supporting Black and Brown, Latin nonprofits across the region.

This year we entered into a pilot project with the Cleveland Clinic where we have a direct referral system with them where they send 50 clients to us.

And what we do is provide full wraparounds.

We provide our same services.

But what this is gonna allow us to do is to have a model that we can then evaluate to show the impact that we have on Cleveland clients.

And my goal and my hope is that we have 99% infant survival amongst our program.

We know that we have a really great rate of having women who have full term births, 90%, that these clients should have those same, if not the best outcomes.

And that will help them with understanding the need for hospitals to support doulas, to be open to doulas coming into the healthcare system and to provide funding, most importantly.

(laughs) (audience laughing) Another partnership that I'm incredibly proud of is we have a project that is badly named, the Maternal Mortality Project.

But what the Maternal Mortality Project is we go into the Cuyahoga County Jail and provide services for every expecting African-American mother in the jail.

(audience clapping) A lot of my work is centered on dignity for Black women, dignity and respect.

And so one of the things that project makes me so proud about is that when these moms have us in the room with them, these births are unshackled.

There is not a guard in the room.

And they're able to still have a beautiful birthing experience regardless of what their situation is.

(audience clapping) We bring lactation supplies to the hospitals as well and make sure that they're able to breastfeed their babies if that's what they would like to do.

So really trying to ensure that these moms that we're serving really have everything that they can need and then whoever's taking that baby home, is okay to do so.

Additionally, we are the first and only doula agency in the state of Ohio that Care Source has contracted with.

We have a $250,000 partnership with them to serve a hundred women.

Again in a pilot similar to Cleveland Clinic, we wanna be able to show how impactful our services are and we're really grateful to be able to get this kind of funding to show that this work is impactful.

If the managed care providers are putting their money where their mouths are, then we know that this work is being impactful.

Earlier this week, I am so excited to say that we received, Monday, we received a grant of $505,000, which is gonna support us in building out our postpartum program.

We wanna really thank you.

(audience clapping) There's lots of good at BBC.

We want to really ensure that we are able to provide the most hands-on and the best support we could possibly for our families.

And we wanna really wrap our arms.

So we're gonna be providing meals to moms in the immediate days, following them coming home from the hospital.

We're gonna make sure that, we have hired three postpartum doulas.

They're gonna be trained in lactation, placenta encapsulation, the screens of postpartum depression so that they can really wrap their arms around moms.

We do birth so well and we have always stayed with our moms for a year, but I wanna make sure that we are doing even better.

We have a program called Our Wellness Network, which is a community driven network established in 2020 to address the gaps in mental health services.

And OWN is a network of 35 Black grief recovery specialists, lay people and therapists who provide services in our community.

And I wanna say something.

My senior director of behavioral health came to me.

We do a lot of things collaboratively at our organization and she said, okay, we have a lot of grief amongst our team, we have a lot of trauma.

We didn't get to stop during Covid.

We went virtual March 16th, of 2020, and we never stopped.

And she said, everyone on this team is required to go through the grief recovery method with a grief recovery specialist, staff, doula, me included, I don't get a pass.

We all have to go through it and I appreciate that because we don't want our team to be burned out because this work can be so incredibly taxing because we are all Black women helping 99% Black women, that could be our mother's, sisters, cousins, friends.

And it can become very taxing.

I wanna talk, again, about something really exciting.

We are incredibly grateful for the partnership that we have with Cleveland State University.

In 2021, we were awarded a grant in the amount of a million dollars to form an interdisciplinary...

I know lots of good things at BBC.

(audience laughing, clapping) It's because I'm a rule breaker.

(audience clapping) We are also incredibly grateful for that partnership because what it's allowed us to do is create an app called Thrive, that's gonna help us with clinical and social indicators from moms, fathers and infants.

And it's gonna provide resources to promote live birth and a healthy first birth.

But I wanna give a special shout out to Dr. Heather Rice, who's the assistant professor of nursing at Cleveland State and she's our principal investigator on this project.

She believes in our work so much, she fights for our work so much and through this partnership, we now get to, we train our doulas internally but through this partnership we now get to go into CSU.

They have a pregnancy simulation lab and we can have our doulas who are training, have hands-on experience with a simulated birth, practicing things like what happens when you have shoulder ablations or things like that.

Like really, really excited for that work.

Now last but not least, I have to talk about our advocacy efforts because we have been working really hard for the past three years on a couple of things.

We have been lobbying hard at the state level for House Bill 142, which is the legislation that will make doulas eligible to receive Medicaid reimbursement.

If passed, that would empower birthing families reduced rates of racial disparity in maternal and infant health and ultimately save lives.

And I do see that Representative Bishara Addison is in this room.

And I have to say, Bishara, I do, because we didn't get state capital funding for our project and we fought really hard, we advocated, we did all the right things and when that didn't happen, you get discouraged.

(faint whispering, crying) - It's okay.

- It's okay.

- And I'm very grateful for Bishara because she did what we as Black women do.

She got on that floor of the State House and she advocated for Birthing Beautiful Communities.

And it was that day, House Bill 142 was not supposed to be voted on.

And they voted to move House Bill 142 through, so thank you.

(audience clapping) I almost made it, I almost made it.

Additionally, we have been advocating for funding to support, again, our freestanding birth center.

There are only four a hundred birth centers in the country and less than 5% of those are represented by people of color.

And we know that this is a critical and key solution.

And so with that we are really grateful and we have to also thank the George Gund Foundation because they leveraged a gift in 2021 of a million dollars which we've been able to use to secure an additional $3 million in project commitments.

And we're working really hard and we are appreciative of the city, both the city council and the administration's consideration of a $2 million ARPA request for our birthing center as well.

We are really trying to transform lives and save communities.

And as I close, I just wanted to share a testimonial that to me speaks to exactly who we are, what we do, and why we do what we do.

When I found myself pregnant in 2018, I was in complete disbelief.

I had always been told, I would never be able to get pregnant.

And if I did, my body wouldn't sustain the pregnancy.

I was here in Cleveland with a partner who wanted me to abort, a 16-year-old son, three stepchildren and no support system.

I started to do research on waterbirth, midwives, death rates for Black women during and after childbirth and this research led me to the idea of a doula.

Previously I had only heard of doulas through celebrities.

And as a working class person, I immediately knew that a doula was not something I could afford.

One day I stumbled upon an article written about BBC and the work that they do in the Cleveland area.

I gave them a call and have been under their wing ever since.

I felt vulnerable when I went to my intake appointment, my initial feeling that I was gonna be judged for being weak, for wanting extra support during my birthing experience.

After all, women have been having babies for so many years and none of my family members ever needed a doula.

I was wrong.

I was immediately greeted with compassion, understanding and sisterhood.

Following my birth, my doula continued to follow up with me.

She offered me in-home support by coming and just sitting with me, with my baby while I took a shower.

She gave me tips on how to be successful in running a household and attending to a newborn.

And now as my baby is one-years-old, I have completed the PSP training with BBC and am now a certified PSP.

I feel as though everything has come full circle and I am now able to support women through one of the toughest and most beautiful times of their lives, as someone did for me.

I'm grateful for the opportunity and I truly love what I do.

Thinking about disparities, especially when it comes to children, is incredibly painful.

But those of you who know me know that this is more than a job for me.

I'm constantly putting my experience to work as an advocate for equity, but more simply, no one should ever have to experience what my friend Sam endured, the pain, the trauma, the fear that our systems are not set up to avoid that happening again.

I'm here to stand up for families and to be sure that they have every opportunity to plan big, joyful, and beautiful first birthdays and many more after that.

I invite you all to stand with me and learn more following this presentation.

Let's grow our village together.

Thank you.

(audience clapping) (indistinct chattering) (audience cheering) - We are about to begin... (audience cheering) We are about to begin the audience Q&A.

I'm Kristen Baird Adams, president of the City Club board of Directors.

We are joined today by Jazmin Long, president and CEO of Birthing Beautiful Communities.

We welcome questions from all, City Club members, guests, students, and those joining us via our livestream on CityClub.org or our radio broadcast at 89.7 Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to tweet a question, please do so at @TheCityClub.

You can also text your questions to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

And the City Club staff will do its best to work it into the program.

May we have our first question please?

- Hey, Jazmin.

(audience laughing) - How did I know you were gonna ask a question?

(audience laughing) - Thank you for your work.

It's just marvelous.

Mark Twain said the two most important times in our life are when we're born and when we figure out why.

And obviously, you know your purpose.

So I know you said you don't like to talk about yourself, but my question is, what have you learned about yourself as a result of the work that you do?

- I think to do this work, you have to be very reflective and that's fortunate and unfortunately because we are dealing with a lot of traumas and what I've learned the most about myself is that I have a hard time setting boundaries, but that it's so needed because it leads to kind of the same stuff that we're trying to not have happened to our clients because toxic stress for African American women is real.

And I've learned to really take care of myself in a healthy way through this work, right?

- Hello, Jazmin?

- Hey.

- First of all, thank you all so much.

Thank Birthing Beautiful Communities and their doulas.

You all have always been my favorite births, as a midwife to be a part of, because of the involvement, the love, the care that you give to Black women is just amazing.

So thank you to everyone here, including Ms. Verna, who I adore speaking to every single day.

My staff tried to take it from me and I'm like, no thank you, I wanna talk to Ms. Verna myself.

So thank you all so much.

But on that same note that what you were talking about, supporting Black women who are supporting other Black women, that could be very hard, difficult, it could be very triggering and traumatic.

How do you support your staff of Black women so that we are able to do what we do in supporting other Black women?

- Thank you, that's a great question.

So I wanna talk about, I wanna go back to 2019.

So in 2019, I had a conversation with one of my program officers from a foundation that had been providing us with a low level of support.

And I said to them, you're asking me, like personally, you're calling me every time you have an issue with a Black woman that you wanna know how to help.

You're asking BBC to serve all these clients.

You're requiring so much from us and you're giving us $50,000.

I said, what am I gonna do with that?

How am I going to be able to take care of women when I'm worried about making sure I'm taken care of?

And so the funder was really receptive to that conversation.

They have since started making really large operational gifts for us 'cause that was the other part of it is offering operational gifts.

Because of the work that we do, I have to pour into my team.

I have to find things for us to do because even one loss is too much for us to bear, right?

And so we have really been intentional about making sure that we're able to do monthly outings.

So like downstairs, I'm excited to go hang out with my team now.

We try to do a retreat offsite and we really try to ensure that we're taking time so even if it's giving PTO if needed, we have unlimited PTO.

But letting people take their time when they need to, recognize that we have families, things are going on, trying to be flexible with regard to the work schedule.

See I'm a different kind of boss because I'm not like, I don't care when you're in the office.

I don't care how you get it done 'cause I'm a two o'clock in the morning worker.

As long as you get your work done at BBC, you're gonna be okay with me.

But I think it really is critically important to be mindful in the way that we're dealing with Black women because I have my own traumas that I'm dealing with.

I have my own family stuff going on.

They have their own family stuff going on.

And then you have to imagine we're working with clients that may sometimes not have the boundaries to know when they shouldn't be calling you at two o'clock in the morning just 'cause they wanna talk.

And that happens more often than know.

Ms. Verna, who is our local BBC hero, is really, really the one on the, yeah, please clap for Ms. Vernon because she is excellent.

(audience clapping) I often say that like, Ms Verna really is the heart and soul of BBC and I don't think there's a person that cares more about this work in our community than her.

So I'm really glad to have her on my team.

And again, we do lots of showering, lots of loving on each other.

It's a fun time when you come to our office, I must say.

- Hi, Jazmin.

- Good morning.

Or, good afternoon.

- Afternoon.

I would like to say I'm a proud grandmother of three BBC grandchildren.

(audience sighs, clapping) And my question for you is the other part of BBC, including the fathers, how is that playing out at this time?

- Absolutely, so earlier, this year we hired a full-time person to serve in our fatherhood department.

We have to support the fathers.

We have got to support families.

(audience clapping) Like when we say that we're about families, some of our classes are even centered on like co-parenting when you're not together, things like that.

Really ensuring that people feel that they have the skills and the tools and that's, again, a part of what Dr. Heather's work is.

She just recently put a- Oh, Dr. Collins, I didn't see you.

Dr. Heather is working with us on an evaluation of our dads right now.

So I think she's had about 20 fathers fill out this really long assessment and we're gonna do an evaluation based on that as well.

So always trying to be inclusive of the fathers.

- [Audience Member] I'd be interested in helping out.

- Thank you.

- In addition to what you do regarding your staff and outings and things like that, how about for their emotional health and theirs emotional support?

What does BBC do to ensure that your staff is at the best mental capacity that they can be?

- So I guess, Ms. Yolanda, who's my executive assistant, didn't like my first answer.

(audience laughing) (Jazmin laughs) (audience laughing) We do, we do place a heavy, heavy, heavy emphasis on mental and behavioral health amongst our team members.

Even if I notice something is going on, I noticed a coworker was really overwhelmed and I could sense it.

I said, you need to take a month off, like take a month off and come back to us when you are able to be in a better space.

So I have to be cognizant.

I have to give a lot of myself to the team to really know what's going on with them in their lives and using that as a tool by which to assess situations.

So everyone has that.

Oh, and we just recently hired a full-time mental health counselor to be on staff who can provide immediate support for those who actually need it in real time.

Was that better, Yolanda?

(audience laughing) And they get me together, Lord have mercy.

(audience clapping) - Jazmin, I'm so proud of you.

I'm just so proud of you and the work of your team.

It is a delight to see you shine in this way.

My question is the role of faith-based organizations.

So I'm asking that with my other head and my world.

And what is the role of faith-based organizations and how can faith-based organizations go deeper in partnership with BBC?

- First of all, I think there's an incredible role.

We even have some funding to support community and faith-based work through the state of Ohio, particularly around this issue of grief, particularly around classes.

There are real opportunities to really address some of our traumas that we have as a community.

And I think the faith-based community plays a huge role in that.

Like even I know that your husband is a grief recovery counselor and really engaging the fathers too, looking at ways in which we can be inclusive.

So I think there's such a huge role.

Everyday, it feels like BBC is moving like this.

But I would love to connect with you offline if you wanna help me build that up because I think there is a real opportunity for us to do that.

- Jazmin, my good sister.

- Hey, Chief.

- You are absolutely incredible by the way.

- [Jazmin] Love you.

- You know, I imagine that there may be concerns with engagement of men in your work, right?

I mean even looking around the room.

So if you could talk a little bit about how can men be involved specifically to help to further this.

- Thank you.

And I'm really glad that you said that because even with our fundraiser, we've been thinking about how to really get men more at the table with our work.

But here's the thing, there is a role for everyone in this work.

I am not a mother, right?

I am not a mother.

But there's a role for me in this work.

There is a way that fathers and men can be engaged with our work if it's just supporting us, if it's encouraging us and if it's leveraging resources that you might have to be impactful as well.

Thank you.

- Hey, Jazmin.

- Hey.

- Hey, I'm Iesha.

I just wanna say that I have two daughters and one of my daughters who's nine, was actually a part of the pilot of Birthing Beautiful Communities.

I had a C-section.

But I guess what my question is, is that even in having a doula and feeling like it's a luxury to have her, my family didn't understand it.

My mother felt slighted that it was another person in the room to help me.

And being able to educate my mother while acknowledging her emotions of being a grandmother and experiencing this moment, having sharing it with someone else in a helping role to me was hard.

So are there any situations that, that happened where you have to educate your family in building in this relationship with someone who's supposed to help you?

- It happens more often than you would think.

And we actually wish, this is why we say families now.

We are inclusive of the grandparents even in our programming because some people do feel very slighted when they're not able to attend their child's labor and delivery.

Particularly, you have to imagine, during Covid, sometimes women were having to make the choice between doula, mom, doula, partner, and sometimes they were choosing doula.

We've had some very physical incidences at hospital systems.

(audience laughing) Okay?

So now we really do try to work with the whole family so that they're not feeling slighted.

And again, that's why I like the testimonial.

Somebody will say, I didn't have a doula.

I didn't need anybody.

You're here just fine.

And so we really work with them to understand why our work is needed and that we're really there, even with the partner, we say, we're not there to take your place.

We're there to help you and to help the mom.

- So, Jazmin, I just have a comment and I just wanted to share with the room, as her mom, I'm very proud of her.

(audience clapping) Ever since she was a little girl, I know she hates me to talk about it.

She says, we're both the same.

We don't like to talk about ourself.

We're in the helping field all the time.

But from early on, I remember when I was actually, I started out in my field of therapy and I was working at a homeless shelter and she was in high school and she had to do community service and she would come over every day after school to teach the people who couldn't read and write how to read and write.

And in the fifth grade, she wrote a book.

She was a young author, something about drugs, that she knew nothing about.

But she got educated somewhere 'cause it was, say no to drugs.

And I was just so proud of her.

But what I want to add to all of this is that she is such an amazing woman of God and the work that she does is amazing.

And I'm so glad that I was able to fly in real quick last night to be here for this event 'cause since she's been at BBC, I haven't really been around because of the pandemic and all of that.

I'm in Florida, so.

But I just wanna share my daughter with Cleveland because her journey in Cleveland has been so amazing from politics, government, nonprofit organizations.

And she's given so much of herself.

I barely talk to her (laughs).

But I'm grateful for all the relationships and connections she has made here to the point where I feel that she's safe here.

It's 10 years this year.

And I'm just very proud of you.

And I just want you, I'm gonna sit down, but I just want you to know- (audience laughing) And I want these people.

(audience laughing) I want everybody to know how proud I am.

That's what she does.

She's the boss of me.

But I just really want to, to just let you know, you have a jewel here and don't take it for granted because she has a lot to offer.

(audience clapping) (Jazmin laughs) - Pretty tough to follow, your beautiful mother.

(audience laughing) Couldn't agree more, heartfelt appreciation and kudos for all you've accomplished, Jazmin.

Would you share observations, insights from the perspective of your being Black-led, Black-serving, not-for-profit, in the broader ecosystem of Greater Cleveland?

Thanks.

- Absolutely, so, being a Black-led, Black-serving unapologetic organization is something else, right?

Yeah, it is something else.

But I will say I'm really grateful.

When I stepped into this role in leadership, I've been unapologetic about who I am, about who Birthing Beautiful Communities is and I've just been my authentic self because that's the only way I know how to be.

And look, it's worked.

We have grown from a budget of about 900,000 to already, our fiscal year started July.

We have $3.5 million in grants committed.

(audience clapping) I know how to have the conversation just enough that it doesn't make people be upset or offended, but that they understand that there's a real true call to action.

I call my funders to the table and I said we need this.

And I am able to advocate for even things that they may seem unconventional to others, but I can put a twist on it.

Like one of my funders said that they weren't gonna pay for one of my colleagues maternity leave through their grant.

So there were about 12 people on this email.

I write back and I said, so you mean to tell me that you're gonna deny parental leave for my pregnant Black employee for a Black infant mortality reduction grant?

So needless to say, there was only a reply to one person and it was me.

They didn't reply all in the next email where they said, oh nevermind, we misunderstood.

That's approved.

(audience laughing) I don't always take a no, but I don't always take, no, I push back, I ask questions.

I fight for the women that I work for because they're so important to me and making sure that they're taken care of is important to me.

And as such, I fight every day.

And it literally is a fight every single day.

That is the most unfortunate part about this work is it's so taxing because I'm a Black woman working for Black women.

I get asked a lot of time, well why don't you include this community?

Why don't you include this community?

And it's really, our services are open to anyone who wants 'em but we are an unapologetically Black organization.

So I'm just gonna leave it there 'cause I see... (audience clapping) - Jazmin, thank you for the work you do.

We truly appreciate you.

I have a text question that just came in.

So someone said, some of the hardest moments of my life were supporting my mothers when they experience infant and pregnancy loss.

How can we best support Black and Brown mothers when the unthinkable happens?

- Absolutely, the first thing, and Ms. Sabrina Roberts is in the room and Samantha's in the room, is that we need to make sure that they're connected to the Pregnancy and Infant Law Society, PAIL.

That is the network, that is the place where we need to get them to, usher them to so that they have the support that they need.

- Good afternoon.

I have to say that I'm very grateful to Medical Mutual for opening this up.

This is the first time that I've been here and the first time I'm hearing about this organization and the work that you all are doing or that we all are doing.

My question is, do you currently work with any of the NPAC sororities or any of the NPAC organizations and would you like to?

(audience laughing) (Jazmin laughs) - The answer is, we wanna work with, we really do wanna work with everyone because it takes all of us, and I want particularly for women to understand that it's okay to ask for our services.

Oftentimes I will get told by someone, oh, I didn't come to Birth and Beautiful Communities because I felt it was wrong for me to take services away from someone else who might have needed them.

And I'm like, our services are for all women regardless of income level.

And we do that on purpose because we all know about the Black tax, right?

So just because you might be a high earner, you might still have so many other responsibilities that you still can't sacrifice a thousand, $1,500 to pay for an outside doula.

I want all women to feel like our services are open, available and at their service.

So that is really important for me.

So I'll be here.

Christine has my information too.

Like we wanna work with Medical Mutual as well.

Thank you.

(audience clapping) - Hi, Jazmin.

I love what you do and it was just so wonderful.

Being a Black woman myself, it's so wonderful what you do.

My question is, is there any support groups or peer support programs for women that have gone through BBC to further uplift each other and support each other as their children are growing up?

- Did you plant that question someone?

So... (audience laughing) We have a new support group, it's called Real Talk Tuesdays that we're gonna be opening up specifically for that.

So that we are offering people, the class this Tuesdays about breaking generational ties.

So really having unique conversations, candid conversations with our families.

And I say that your question is great because one of the things I haven't even talked to Heather and Dr. Celeste about is that I really wanna do some kind of longitudinal study and look at our kids over their lifespan.

And so like you're spot on with what we are thinking about.

Thank you.

- Jazmin, your mother's absolutely right.

Cleveland is incredibly blessed to have you here with us.

You're a very young woman, really, and you chose to come to Cleveland.

There's a side of you that we haven't talked about and that's of you, personally, that in addition to the incredibly important work at BBC, you chose to be involved in nonprofits in Cleveland.

You are chair of Near West Theater, a theater on the near West side that helps people come off the street and be on the stage.

Why was that important to you?

- You know, some things, you just can't explain them, but I do know that I always have felt that I should live a life of service.

I've always been in volunteerism.

In college, I did win an award at our graduation, the Anna Lorde Strauss Award, and it's a medal that is given to someone who does extraordinary volunteerism on campus.

I've always chosen to be engaged.

I think it's really important for our community.

I think it's really important for my community, and so that is why I have chose and I continue to be over-committed and over-extended (audience laughing) in northeast Ohio.

Thank you guys, so much.

(audience clapping, cheering) - Thank you, Jazmin Long, for joining us at the City Club of Cleveland today.

Today's forum was part of our health innovation series in partnership with Medical Mutual and part of our local Hero series in partnership with Citizens Bank and Dominion Energy.

Today's forum also was the Colleen Shaughnessy Memorial Forum.

A St. Louis native, Colleen came to Cleveland in the 1980s as Sherrod Brown's campaign manager and eventually served as his deputy director.

She was an enthusiastic, honest, and idyllic community leader.

Her energy was contagious and she demanded commitment and social awareness from all those in her life.

We are grateful to her family, her friends, and her colleagues for honoring her memory with their endowment gift and support of the City Club of Cleveland.

We also would like to thank guests at tables hosted by the Adler Mission, Birthing Beautiful Communities, Case Western Reserve University, the Department of Nutrition and Center for Trauma and Adversity, Citizens, First Year Cleveland, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, Huntington, Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, MC2 Stem High School, Medical Mutual, and OhioGuidestone.

Thank you, all, for being here today and for your support.

Be sure to join us next week at the City Club on Tuesday, October 25th.

We will talk about how Cleveland can leverage the many talents of immigrants and refugees who join our communities.

And on Thursday, October 27th, we'll be back with our education innovation series, talking about out of school time services for K through 12 students.

Finally, on Friday, October 28th, Dave Isay, founder of Story Corps, will be here for the City Club's annual meeting.

Tickets are still available for each of these forums, and you can find out more on our website, CityClub.org.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you, once again, to Jazmin Long and thank you members, friends and guests of the City Club.

I'm Kristen Baird Adams and this forum is now adjourned.

(audience clapping) - [Announcer] (indistinct) Speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to City Club.org.

(ambient music) Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.