Growing Gardens of Doulas

The Okeechobee Healthy Start's Community Doula Program provides high-quality prenatal, labor and postpartum support to mothers in our community even though we do not have a delivery hospital within a 45 minute radius. This program provides certified professional doulas in our care system and embeds doulas in our community to support and educate pregnant women to have a healthier birth and the best care possible for their child.

We have been able to train two types of specialized doulas that are certified in providing specific and quality services to our high-risk, socially vulnerable clients. This includes the birthing doulas and the postpartum doulas. A certified birthing doula helps ensure that the mother achieves the healthiest birth experience possible. At this time, we currently have 17 certified birthing doulas. A certified postpartum doula provides evidenced-based information on infant feeding, emotional and physical recovery from birth, mother-baby bonding, infant soothing, and basic newborn care to ensure the child is as healthy and safe as possible. At this time, we currently have 4 certified postpartum doulas.

This program, as a whole, is designed to serve low-income, high-risk women throughout their pregnancy, their birth and their postpartum period to improve our local statics regarding pregnancy, maternal, and infant health outcomes. Of our roster of certified doulas, we have 8 certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians and 6 Certified Breastfeeding Counselors. Our goal is to increase these numbers to fully serve our local mothers and infants to the best of our ability. By increasing access to knowledge and breastfeeding information, we are increasing our chances of having the best outcome possible for our next generation. We are very excited and eager to see the change in our local birthing community, as this is the one aspect we can assist with since we lack access to prenatal and postpartum care.

Okeechobee Healthy Start Coalition is special because we are resilient. Our team is small yet passionate. We strive to better our community to great heights with a lack of available resources in our grasp being located in a rural community. Healthy Start's mission is to ensure all women have access to quality prenatal care and all infants have access to services that promote healthy growth and development. We are striving to get all of our doulas to participate in continued education. We hope to have all of the doulas certified Breastfeeding Counselors by December 2023. We provide quality care in a community that lacks it but desperately needs it. Please help us accomplish this goal!