The Big Letdown by Kimberly Seals Allers

How has being a mother influenced your work as a breastfeeding advocate? It’s also a tool that white women can use for allyship by choosing healthcare that’s truly inclusive. Black women have consumer power and we’re going to let our sisters vote with their feet by choosing healthcare providers that are Irth-approved. We want Irth to be a public accountability mechanism that can improve bias training by having real-time data that’s rooted in the lived experience of Black and brown birthing people. On the back end, we can effect change by turning these collective qualitative experiences into quantitative data to inform what’s happening in healthcare practices. KSA: Irth-it’s “birth” but we dropped the “B” for bias-is a decision-making tool that allows Black and brown women to leave and search for reviews of healthcare providers, hospitals, and clinics. How does your app, Irth, help address disparities in maternal health? We spoke with Seals Allers about how her app, Irth, could help eradicate racism and implicit bias in healthcare, how she became a breastfeeding advocate, and why she no longer explains Black Breastfeeding Week. Kimberly Seals Allers, one of the cofounders of Black Breastfeeding Week, has been at the forefront of using community research models to address racial disparities in maternal health for nearly two decades.Īs a journalist, author, consultant-and app developer!-she’s on a mission to change the culture of infant feeding in this country.

The Big Letdown by Kimberly Seals Allers