Doula Medicaid Project

About the Doula Medicaid Project

The National Health Law Program’s Doula Medicaid Project seeks to improve health outcomes for pregnant Medicaid enrollees by ensuring that all pregnant individuals enrolled in Medicaid who want access to a doula will have one.

Low-income women are at the highest risk of poor birth outcomes in the United States, and women of color, especially Black women, are especially vulnerable. Doula care is among the most promising approaches to combating disparities in maternal health. Women receiving doula care have been found to have improved health outcomes for both themselves and their infants, including higher breastfeeding initiation rates, fewer low-birth weight babies, and lower rates of cesarean sections. Doulas can also help reduce the impacts of racism and racial bias in health care on pregnant women of color by providing individually tailored, culturally appropriate, and patient centered care and advocacy.

We are lawyers, researchers, and policy advocates. We are not doulas. As such, we seek to do all our work in partnership with and with the guidance of community doula groups, doula collectives, and individual doulas, especially Black doulas and Black-led doula groups, as well as doulas and doula groups serving low-income clients.

To achieve the goal of Medicaid coverage of doula care, we are engaged in advocacy work on various fronts, including:

• Working with doulas and other stakeholders to identify and overcome barriers to creating a sustainable and equitable Medicaid coverage of doula care program;
• Educating legislators and other stakeholders about the importance of expanding full-spectrum Medicaid coverage of doula care, including doula support for prenatal care, labor/delivery, postpartum care, miscarriage management, and abortion;
• Information gathering and sharing with states around the country who have proposed legislation relating to Medicaid coverage of doula care; and
• Advocating for state legislation creating a Medicaid coverage of doula care program, initially in California and then promoted as a model strategy in other states.

If you have any questions or comments, or would like more information, please contact NHeLP Senior Staff Attorney Amy Chen at [email protected].