A Reproductive Health Center Grows in The Bronx

 

The holistic center, which provides services from acupuncture to pap smears, is intended to be a step toward finally bringing a birth center to the borough with the city’s highest maternal mortality rate.

This Article originally appeared in The City.

By Rachel Kahn

Follow @Bronxvoice1

BRONX - A new holistic reproductive health center in the northwest Bronx is providing wellness services to people giving birth in a borough with few options for that type of care. 

The clinic, called Maryam, opened its doors in March and has been slowly ramping up services. Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, who has made combatting maternal mortality a priority, toured Maryam on Friday.

“This is definitely a turning point for the community,” said Gibson. “We're ready to start saving lives and taking care of people, and making people feel assured within their birth journey.” 

The clinic offers “holistic care” that “takes care of the whole person,” said doula Myla Flores, who co-founded Maryam with Carla Williams, an OBGYN physician. At Maryam, holistic care ranges from traditional reproductive health offerings like gynecological care and prenatal appointments to services like acupuncture, massage and lactation support. Maryam’s team also features doulas, midwives, and physicians like Williams, with the goal of providing comprehensive care. 

Maryam Reproductive Health and Wellness was set to provide maternity services near Montefiore Hospital in the North Bronx, Nov. 1, 2024.

“This is an industrialized country that has some of the worst maternal health outcomes,” said Williams. “In other countries — like European countries, for example, that have an integrated system where midwives are working in collaboration with OBGYN providers — we see way better outcomes.” 

Pregnancy-related mortality has been increasing across the U.S. in recent decades, with women today more likely to die before, during or after giving birth than their mothers were. The Bronx had the city’s highest rate of maternal mortality as of 2021, the last year the health department has data for.  Citywide, Black women are nine times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts. 

The clinic, says Flores, is a stepping stone toward finally bringing a birth center in the Bronx: a location outside of a hospital or someone’s own home where they could give birth under the supervision of a midwife.   

 

There are multiple potential locations blocks away from the Maryam that could become such a facility, said Flores — if they could secure funding. 

“If we don't have the millions of dollars it takes to build a ground-up birth center, or renovate a building to become very birth center-specific because there are specific requirements, then let's do what we can,” Flores said of the decision to create a reproductive health center that stops just short of providing a space for people to give birth.

Baby Steps

Maryam is a bright, homey space on a quiet street a block away from Montefiore Hospital. It has three rooms for appointments, including for massages, lactation consults and prenatal visits. There’s also a larger main room, with colorful chairs, bookshelves and hanging plants.

“People will all come together in this very space and feel their bellies, listen to their baby's heart,” Flores said of the group prenatal classes offered along with other workshops and events. “They get to be pregnant people together in a safe space and connect.”

Maryam Reproductive Health and Wellness was set to provide maternity services near Montefiore Hospital in the North Bronx, Nov. 1, 2024.

The birth center that Flores is working towards would cater to low-risk patients who are otherwise healthy and aren’t experiencing conditions like high blood pressure or gestational diabetes which could complicate their delivery. Those patients could give birth while attended to by a midwife, outside of a hospital setting. 

In 2020, Flores founded The Birthing Place, a team of maternal health professionals working to “create a maternity care system that centers the marginalized.” She then created the Womb Bus, a “wellness center on wheels” that provides portable education and resources.

Eight years ago, New York passed a law allowing midwives to operate birth centers like the one Flores is envisioning, but regulations and red tape have delayed advocates’ attempts to open any in The Bronx — and a state law that was passed with the aim of reducing some of this bureaucratic burden was significantly defanged by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022.

Currently, the city has only two midwife-run birth centers, both in Brooklyn. Flores invited Hochul to the walkthrough Friday, but she did not come. Hochul’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment about Maryam.

Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, left, tours the Maryam Reproductive Health and Wellness center in the North Bronx, Nov. 1, 2024.

“At the end of the day, our job is to give birthing individuals and mothers choices,” Gibson said in her visit to the center on Friday. “I think the momentum is there.”

The Maryam clinic is open Monday through Friday, currently by appointment only. They received their Medicaid credentials this month, and will soon be able to take Medicaid for gynecological services.

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