Race, Stress and Black Mother and Infant Mortality: Emotional Health Matters

Angela Neal-Barnett, Ph.D., is a leading expert in Black mental health, emphasizing anxiety disorders among Black women and girls. Her latest efforts center around expectant mothers—Black women in particular—who may be suffering from PTSD or other stressors that can lead to increased pre-term births, infant mortality, and mother mortality. Through her Spirit of Motherhood program, pregnant women and their preschool children receive a multi-level intervention for PTSD. 

Dr. Neal-Barnett founded and directs the Program for Research on Anxiety Disorders among African Americans (PRADAA) Lab, which currently receives funding from the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation, American Psychological Association, Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland, and the Women’s Endowment Fund of the Akron Community Foundation. The recipient of the 2020 ADAA Jerilyn Ross Clinician Advocate Award, Dr. Neal-Barnett is the author of Soothe Your Nerves: The Black Woman's Guide to Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic, and Fear (Simon & Schuster).
 

Ms. Christin Farmer Kane is the Executive Director and Founding Doula of Birthing Beautiful Communities (BBC) a community-based doula and perinatal support organization whose mission is to prevent and reduce infant mortality, and low birth weights in high-risk neighborhoods by culture, education, advocacy and support and engagement. A graduate of Kent State University, Ms. Farmer founded BBC in 2014.  Currently  a fellow in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. Ms. Farmer’s work has been  published in the Journal of Social Work in Healthcare,  featured in The Guardian, The Plain Dealer, Scene Magazine and heralded by the Cleveland Foundation, the City of Cleveland and the State of Ohio.