Dr. Holly Horan PhD, Co-Presenter

Holly Horan, PhD, is an Assistant Research Professor in the Global and Rural Women’s Health Program in the Department of Obstetrics at Gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s School of Medicine. She is also a birth and postpartum doula and a perinatal health advocate. Dr. Horan’s research foci include maternal stress and birth outcomes, perinatal substance use, and collaborative perinatal care with an emphasis on the inclusion and recognition of doulas as members of the maternity care team. She conducts research in the contiguous United States and Puerto Rico in collaboration with doulas, midwives, physicians, and other allied professionals. Dr. Horan previously served as the program coordinator for the Community Doula Program, a Medicaid-funded program providing doula services to priority populations in three counties in Oregon, and is the former (2021-2023) President of the Board of Directors for BirthWell Partners Community Doula Project in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Horan providers training on trauma-informed care and patient-centered care for perinatal healthcare clinicians, support professionals, and researchers.

Session

Community Based Strategies for Increasing Access to Doula Care

Birth doula support is widely recognized as an effective strategy to improve perinatal outcomes and reduce health care costs. However, in many states where families suffer some of the worst infant and maternal morbidity and mortality rates in the United States, birth doulas are underutilized. Furthermore, in states like Alabama, there is no Medicaid or insurance reimbursement for doula support services, making doula support available almost exclusively to pregnant families with more financial resources. In this session, Dalia Abrams and Holly Horan discuss results from their community-based research examining barriers and facilitators to increasing access to doula support in Alabama, and by extension, in the US South-East. They discuss their efforts to build coalitions within the local doula community, sharing their honest experiences about the successes and challenges of this work and the multi-level effort necessary to make doula care a more accessible and sustainable profession for doulas in Alabama and similar states.