Implementing a community-partnered postpartum care model based in reproductive justice for black birthing people: protocol for a pilot mixed-methods intervention study

Abstract: Postpartum care (PPC) in the USA remains largely inaccessible despite calls for community-driven care models to address poor birth outcomes and racial disparities. Fewer than 40% of US birthing people receive even one PPC visit within 6 weeks post-delivery. Lack of adequate/high-quality PPC exacerbates existing health inequities, with black birthing people more than two times as likely to die as white birthing people in the first year postpartum. PPC remains focused on individual biomedical risks and does not take into account social and structural determinants that shape US pregnancy-associated mortality and morbidity.