The Psychology of Black Reproductive Healthcare: Understanding and Transforming Black maternity experiences and maternal health inequities

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Technological advancements in medical science in the last two decades have significantly reduced maternal and infant deaths. Despite these advancements, large discrepancies between Black and white mothers' survival of the birthing process exists (Knight et al., 2021). Black or Black-British babies have more than a 50% chance of experiencing perinatal mortality (National Maternity Review, 2017). Crucially, the influence of race and racism is often missing in the existing research, even as racism is argued to be a public health crisis (Devakumar et al., 2020). To add another layer of complexity, there is limited research on the pregnancy journey of Black trans and non-binary individuals and their experiences of medical care and interaction with healthcare services (Greenfield & Darwin, 2020). Perinatal service providers, whilst highly trans and nonbinary positive, shared that a cis-heteronormative model of care contributes to transphobia and exclusionary practices (Pezaro et al., 2022). Understanding the psychology of Black reproductive healthcare, an under-studied area in public health and psychology, is an essential key step in transforming health care systems and practices, to address the inequalities present in the experiences of the health care system, and ultimately reduce the number of avoidable deaths of Black birthing people (including cis-women, trans men and non-binary individuals who birth). However, to avoid the individualised, white Western psychological stance embedded in the field (Malherbe et al., 2021), the proposed study adopts a transdisciplinary, psychosocial, decolonial and anti-racist framework. As a Black-British woman who is likely to access reproductive healthcare services, and who is aware of these racialised disparities given my experience as a Clinical Research practitioner in the NHS, this project is both personally and professionally important to me. Furthermore, the work of Black women is often excluded from academic understandings of social issues, as well as academic theorising (Reddy & Amer, 2022; Thomas, 2020). As both a service user and a service provider, and as a future Black academic, I seek to invoke changes to the standard of clinical care for myself and for my community.