Fighting for Black Mothers: Political Health Advocacy
Being from Los Angeles, I wanted to interview a black woman from that same city. After almost a month of searching for someone, I ended up being referred to a woman named Adjoa Jones. Upon my first time researching her, I found that she worked with an organization called Black Infants and Families Los Angeles Initiative. She was the head of the community action team for South Los Angeles and South Bay. I contacted her and she graciously agreed to have me interview her, while also providing me with additional information on some work she had done in politics. She asked me to look up a number of bills and the Women’s Policy Institute Los Angeles.
In the podcast, Adjoa talks about these bills and the work she did with the Women’s policy Institute. The bills she talks about in the podcast are senate bill (sb) 464 and assembly bill (ab) 2258. The official name sb464 is the “California Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act”. The bill created an amendment to a previous law that regulated the State Department of Public Health. It specified the creation of multiple maternal and infant health centers as well as the collection and storage of data in regards to ethnic and racial health statistics.
The second bill, the assembly bill 2258 was called the “Doula-care: Medi-cal pilot program”. This bill would require the creation of a doula care program starting on July 1, 2021 that would last for 3 years. It also required that any resident who is part of the Medi-cal program is entitled to receive doula services. Additionally, a board for the creation of the core competencies of doulas in the program would be implemented. Information will be collected by this board in order to decide if the birth outcomes of patients have improved, and if they have, then the feasibility of a statewide program must be considered.
What was interesting when I heard it in the podcast was the fact that Adjoa and three other of her colleagues designed this bill while they were doing the policy fellowship that is a part of the Women’s Policy Institute Los Angeles. They all signed up for a fellowship with the Policy Institute in which they were able to come up with this bill there. They were then able to gain support from multiple assembly members. The bill was just passed in February and as stated before, will start the program in July.
Considering all this, I would like to participate in the community action team for South Los Angeles, especially since I am a resident there. I am also pre-med and have an interest in global and public health, so this initiative combines my interests well. Since I also have been able to contact Adjoa on a more friendly level because of this project, I will be able to hopefully have her as a mentor in the future, or stay in contact with her at the least.
Lastly, the process of trying to find someone to interview has allowed me to come across a lot of other organizations and women in politics that I wouldn’t have known about beforehand. It has inspired me to continue looking for other organizations that do important political advocacy work and/or community engagement.
Bibliography
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB464
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB2258
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6142
https://www.blackinfantsandfamilies.org/south_la
Image source:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fkjlhradio.com%2Fthe-kjlh-womens-health-expo%2Fwhat-every-black-woman-should-know-to-have-a-healthy-and-joyous-birth%2F&psig=AOvVaw0j5JAEOnTh62a-wlrma0Ew&ust=1608162995346000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCIDsvZSY0e0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
Music credits:
Ketsa. “New Soul,” https://freemusicarchive.org/genre/Soul-RB?sort=date&d=0&pageSize=20&page=1