Dr. Keisha Goode of the Sociology Department was awarded the Astounding Advocacy Award by the National Black Midwives Alliance at their recent conference held in Hampton, Virginia. The award recognized her research and advocacy in supporting the continued advancement of the art, science and praxis of U.S. Black midwifery, past and present.
"The Astounding Advocacy award is truly one of the greatest honors of my life. I deeply respect, and am so grateful for, the work of the National Black Midwives Alliance. I am part of a community of Black midwifery enthusiasts and reproductive justice leaders who are committed to restoring Black midwifery as American history and understand the power of Black midwifery care provision.," said Goode, the Vice President of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives. "The Black perinatal health crisis is a very real, but manufactured one. We know what is urgently needed: equitable distribution of social determinants of health, dismantling anti-Blackness and other systems of oppression, dismantling obstetric dominance, restoring midwives as primary sexual and reproductive health care providers, racial-ethnic concordant care etc. Midwifery, and especially Black midwifery, really really matters. This crisis continues to index Blackness to death; the work is to index Blackness to joy and humanity.”
To mark the Center for Disease Control's Black Maternal Health Week in mid-April, SUNY Old Westbury hosted a panel discussion on "Reproductive Justice Now." During the event, the campus community discussed the existing racial disparities that exist, the drivers of these disparities, and will hear from Black doulas, professors, and public health professionals who are dedicated to amplifying the voices of Black birthing people while working to address the existing disparities.
Dr. Goode, a resident of New York City, New York, has been researching Black midwifery since working on her doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the coauthor of “Pregnancy and Birth: A Reference Handbook” and is working on the book “Birthing, Blackness and the Body: Black Midwives and the Pursuit of Reproductive Justice” that is an autoethnographic update and expansion of her doctoral work. Goode is also an affiliated faculty member for the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality and Black Studies program.