Family Village and Delaware County Health Department launch doula directory

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Family Village, in partnership with the Delaware County Health Department, has launched an online doula directory to connect expecting mothers with trained birth professionals.

Doulas, while not medical professionals, specialize in supporting new families through pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period.

As of Sept. 14, 21 doulas are listed on the Delco Doula Directory, where users can search by language, specialty and whether the provider accepts Medicaid.

“Individuals who are working in social services, maternal health, public health, clinical settings, have a place to direct patients to resources that can support someone during pregnancy,” said Katie Kenyon, vice president of programs for Family Village.

Family Village, a program of The Foundation for Delaware County, expects to add more names to the list over the next 18 months.

“Our goal is to get 50 doulas on the registry,” said Erica Loizos, a doula coordinator for Family Village.

In 2019, Family Village began a small-scale federally funded project to create a doula training program. Four years later, the Delaware County Health Department approached Family Village to expand the program.

Thus, the Delco Doula Collaborative was born. The initiative is fully funded through a $600,000 grant from the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor.

Robert Speer, a maternal child health project supervisor with the county health department, worked on the grant application with several of his colleagues. He said the Delco Doula Collaborative is one part of a three-pronged initiative to boost regional maternal care.

A second prong, done in concert with Temple University and Villanova University, involves training nursing students to become certified birthing companions.

“Currently, students that complete the simulations are being matched up with birthing individuals in Delaware County to get hands-on experience,” Speer said.

The final element of the initiative is a yet-to-be-released centralized intake system.

“We’re developing this in-house,” Speer said. “But the idea is that there will be one centralized location for Delaware County residents seeking maternal child health care or resources or services.”

The collapse of Crozer Health, Delaware County’s largest hospital system, has left a massive gap in maternal care in Pennsylvania’s second-most densely populated county. Kenyon said more clients than ever are traveling into Montgomery and Philadelphia counties, as well as the state of Delaware, to deliver their babies.

“When Crozer closed, we also lost our only level-III [neonatal intensive care unit]. And so for babies, for example, that are born less than 32 weeks gestational age, they really either have to be born at one of the out-of-county hospitals or they have to be transferred at delivery,” Kenyon said.

Many of her clients are getting late entry into prenatal care. There’s also an “invisible population,” she said, of women with substance use disorders who are struggling to access the supplemental resources during pregnancy.

Loizos said rough times have fostered a greater sense of collaboration among organizations and providers looking to step up.

“It’s still rough but we’re starting to find new ways to support families in Delaware County,” Loizos said.

Editor’s note: The Foundation for Delaware County provides support for WHYY. WHYY News produces independent, fact-based news content for audiences in Greater Philadelphia, Delaware and South Jersey.