Key takeaways:
Kimberly Seals Allers experienced a lack of medical assistance and care during the birth of her first child.
As a result, she developed an app for mothers of color to share information about their healthcare experiences.
Her goal is to create more than reviews of healthcare experiences. She wants to make a social impact.
When she was preparing to give birth to her first child in 2000, award-winning journalist Kimberly Seals Allers used her professional training to find a top-rated New York hospital.
She researched media ranking lists and early-Internet parenting listservs and blogs. But Kimberly says the staff at the hospital she chose made her labor and delivery difficult.
Even in the early part of the labor process, “I had questions that were not answered,” she says. “I’ve shared publicly that I don’t really understand why I had to have a C-section. I haven’t been able to get that answer.”
The quality of care was also lacking, she says. She didn’t receive pain management support, and nurses did not follow her birth plan.
“I had said I was breastfeeding, and they gave my baby formula anyway,” she says. “I remember having to fight for having my baby with me. And I had read that babies were with mamas as a standard practice of care.”
Exposing racism and bias in Black maternal healthcare
Kimberly attributes the lack of proper medical care to racism and bias that have been documented in Black maternal healthcare.
Clinicians say thinking has changed since 2000 about when to perform C-sections and when to give formula to newborns. But to Kimberly, the experience still stings. “The spectrum of disrespect was the exact opposite of everything that I had read” about the hospital, she says.
“I was an unwed Black woman with basic insurance. And that’s how I was treated. After Kayla [her first child] was born, I realized that those reviews that I had read about were essentially Upper East Side white moms, and they actually were the worst people for me to get a review from.”
Motherhood leads to a career change
That experience began the former ESSENCE magazine editor’s transition from journalist to maternal health strategist and femtech founder.
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Kimberly details Kayla’s birth in episode 2 of the film series, “The Big Idea - Birth Without Bias.” The series showcases “innovators who create big change using technology, science, and engineering.”
The film tells the story of how Kimberly developed, pitched, and got funding for Irth, a Yelp-like app for mothers of color. The name is derived from “birth.” Kimberly dropped the “b” for bias.
App users can search for and review hospitals and providers that offer prenatal, birthing, postpartum, and pediatric care. As of October 2023, Kimberly says 10,000 people across 46 states have used the app.
Storytelling is at the root
Irth, launched in March 2021, is a project of Narrative Nation, Kimberly’s tech nonprofit that uses multimedia storytelling to advance health equity.
Decades before the app idea, Kimberly started her Black maternal health work with writing. Kimberly's son, Michael, was born in 2004. The next year, HarperCollins published her first book, “The Mocha Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy.”
“That book really was the first of its kind," she says. It’s “a lifestyle pregnancy book for Black women that actually looked at pregnancy and childbirth from a socio-cultural perspective.”
Kimberly interviewed hundreds of people for the book. They described their birthing experiences and everyday factors that could affect birth outcomes. “That can include everything from racism at the job, your finances, your relationships, your diet,” Kimberly says.
During her book tour, women across the country shared similar stories to hers. Kimberly compiled their stories on a website and continued speaking to communities.
“Every city was like a focus group of Black moms, and I was hearing their stories, hearing their experiences," she says. "And all of those things traveled with me and stayed with me.”
After she started writing, people approached her with opportunities to test her ideas. She visited cities across the South and talked to people about how to make maternal healthcare better.
“There's a lot of focus on experts and academics and medical journals,” Kimberly says. “And I kept saying, ‘What about if the people in the community have the answer?’”
Deepening engagement could lead to social impact
Today, Kimberly is focusing on expanding her app’s reach with communities and hospitals. She’s also working with more than 150 doulas, who are paid Irth ambassadors. They go to events and educate people about the project.
She sees the potential of making the app about more than reviews. She wants to create social change.
“Here in New York City, there’s a collaborative of 32 birthing hospitals acknowledging they don’t have enough patient experience data,” Kimberly says. “So, we’re providing our data to them to help them inform what they’re going to do as a group of hospitals.”
She says she hopes that leads to better outcomes for a community that's been overlooked.
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