Grantee: South Seattle Women’s Health Foundation
Timeframe: January 2022 – December 2022 | Amount: $30,000
This project seeks to increase access to natural childbirth options, including water births, for BIPOC families in South King County. This will fund 3 birthing tubs in their new Birth Center, the first women-of-color led birth center in Rainier Valley.
Rainier Valley Midwives / South Seattle Women’s Health Foundation would use funds to purchase equipment that is vital for delivering hundreds of babies for families who experience serious disparities. Specifically, they would use funding to purchase and install three hospital-grade, ergonomically-designed birthing tubs for our new Birth and Health Center, including the installation of a ceiling lift track to make them ADA accessible. These tubs are especially important for the families who turn to us, for whom tub deliveries mean a more comfortable, culturally-aligned birthing option. The tubs we are seeking to acquire are big enough to accommodate the birthing person and a birth partner (spouse, mother, grandmother, or friend) who will help the birthing person and midwife bring the baby into the world in a safe, comforting, and supportive manner.
Having a birthing tub for families is especially important given that hospitals in our area typically do not provide this as an option, even though many families express a preference for tubs. As such, these requested tubs, together with our Birth and Health Center’s ADA accessible exam tables and beds, will provide an array of options for all those who seek a natural childbirth.
Further, during the community engagement phase of our Birth and Health Center project, during which we convened six listening sessions with community members and stakeholders, many spoke to the importance of including birthing tubs in our new birth center.
On an ongoing basis, RVM encourages and convenes many opportunities – before, during, and after delivery – during which clients can provide substantive feedback in a safe and welcoming space. In fact, we build our programming around this feedback, making course corrections, service improvements, and initiating new service areas.
About Our Grantee
South Seattle Women’s Health Foundation
Rainier Valley Community Clinic is home to Rainier Valley Midwives, both sponsored by the South Seattle Women’s Health Foundation, which is dedicated to creating spaces for high quality, individualized perinatal care and increasing capacity within the community for jobs in the healthcare industry for local women, especially those of color and immigrant women.
The South Seattle Women’s Health Foundation envisions a world where all women and families have equitable access to high quality culturally relevant education-based healthcare. In this vision, local pioneers in the healthcare field partner with the families they serve to promote the best health of their communities. The South Seattle Women’s Health Foundation provides exceptional direct care to women and families to improve health outcomes including traditionally underserved communities. Their programs increase job capacity for providers of color and our services are based on community-identified needs.
