TCNJ

26 The College of New Jersey Magazine "the most equitable place in the nation to give birth and raise a baby." According to Patterson, every kind of stakeholder was at the table at the summit, identifying how they'd do their part. Higher education leaders pledged to boost training. "The problem we've been trying to tackle is big," Patterson says. The course further came into focus when Medicaid covered doula care, and New Jersey became the third state in the country to expand this coverage. At the same time, the state required doulas seeking Medicaid reimbursement to be "community doula trained." That is, trained in cultural competency (knowledge of how a family's values, behaviors, and beliefs are unique and inform their decisions and experiences) and steeped in an understanding of how the social determinants of health (where someone is born, lives, and works) impact health outcomes. As a result, state officials realized that there weren't enough doulas trained according to these guidelines. The development of the course became urgent. Patterson teamed up with TCNJ alumna Ria Rodney '08, who had already pitched the idea of a doula program to the women's, gender, and sexuality studies department, where she teaches courses as an adjunct professor. Rodney is a public health advocate with 15 years of healthcare experience as a registered nurse, social worker, and doula. She's also the director of Nurture NJ, the multiagency women's health initiative that Murphy launched. "My idea was to bring my experiences and my training to my alma mater," says Rodney, who drew on her own doula training to help develop the course. Patterson and Rodney sat down and determined what students would learn and practice to be certified doulas by the end of the semester. "Some might think you have to be a nurse or have certain experiences. Those things are not true. You have to have a passion for public health and advocacy, and then you'll learn the rest," says Rodney. The interdisciplinary curriculum, which took almost four years to develop and be approved, focuses on health disparities and asks students to analyze how race, power, and privilege function in the healthcare system. "I think the general public believes that when we have these horrible outcomes, it's the result of an individual's choices, that if someone had advocated for themselves or done more research, they'd be alive," says Rodney. "But the reality is that a lot of this is systemic racism and errors in our healthcare system." This foundation connects to the course's focus on doulas as advocates. To be a doula is to speak up for clients throughout their pregnancy, labor, and postpartum journey. Moms in labor may not be able to speak up for themselves for a variety of reasons, including language barriers and discomfort. Doulas are trained to step in and go up the chain of command in any setting. To meet the state's community doula requirement, students become versed in the unique challenges that families in Mercer County face. They learn what it takes to support moms who have postpartum depression, also known as the "baby blues," and they learn how to support those dealing with substance abuse or intimate partner violence. They're trained to connect families to resources that can help them physically and emotionally. For example, if a family is facing housing or food insecurity, it's the doula's role to connect them with community partners who can help. In addition, taking care of families when they get home after birth is another major facet of training. "It could be as long as six weeks before women have a postpartum follow-up appointment," Rodney says. "The doulas close those gaps in wait times." Seeing the need for doulas as a social justice issue resonated with Cielo Salgado-Cowan '25, who enrolled in the course.

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