SACKRED Birth - by Karen Antoinette Scott (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book offers a new obstetric quality paradigm to address violations of physical and emotional safety during childbirth hospitalization. It's a vital call for prioritizing Black mothers' expressions, expectations, and experiences in clinical practice, decision-making, and care delivery.

Book Synopsis

Hospitals, health plans, and quality organizations generally define safety as the absence of a preventable harm and subsequently interpret decreasing trends in adverse physical outcomes as indicators of reducing harm and improving quality. Karen Antoinette Scott situates the contemporary provision of obstetric care and evaluation of obstetric quality in a broader historical context to illuminate a culture of neutral apathy and detached concern towards the lives of Black women, men, and children, dating back to antebellum era ideologies and practices of anti-Black racism and anti-Black misogyny.

Scott challenges conventional obstetric quality ethics, leadership, theories, measures, and methodologies that primarily focus on adverse outcomes, effectively excluding patient experiences and community wisdom. SACKRED Birth argues the need for a more culturally and scientifically responsive, relevant, and rigorous obstetric quality paradigm defined, valued, and shaped for, by, and with Black mothers and birthing people. Using community-based focus groups and consensus dialogue, Scott establishes new obstetric quality norms and methodologies to guide scholars, professionals, and advocates in understanding, investigating, and interpreting clinical practice, decision-making, and care delivery during childbirth in a manner that affirms the humanity, power, and potential, not pathology, of Blackness, Black reproducing bodies, and Black births in hospital settings.

Review Quotes

"This book offers a profound exploration of obstetric racism, illuminating the systemic inequities that Black women face during childbirth in the U.S. healthcare system. By applying a Black feminist framework, Dr. Karen A. Scott effectively critiques traditional paradigms of obstetric care, revealing how they perpetuate harm and neglect the voices of Black mothers. She introduces the SACRED Birth Framework, which is a transformative approach prioritizing the lived experiences of Black women, advocating for a reimagined standard of care that addresses historical injustices. Through rigorous analysis and innovative solutions, it challenges healthcare professionals to recognize and combat the pervasive effects of structural racism. This work not only underscores the urgent need for systemic change but also empowers marginalized voices, making it a crucial contribution to the discourse on maternal health equity. This is essential reading for anyone invested in understanding and dismantling the barriers faced by Black birthing individuals, ultimately aiming to create a safer and more equitable healthcare environment for everybody." --Dana-Ain Davis, Queens College, The City University of New York

""SACKRED Birth: Mobilizing A New Quality Paradigm in Obstetric Care is a game-changer! Dr. Karen Scott provides an actionable framework of obstetric racism, unveiling the injustices experienced by Black women and gender-expansive people birthing within hospital settings in the U.S. Grounded in public health critical race methodology, this book unapologetically centers and uplifts Black women's voices to develop the first ever patient experiences measure of obstetric racism. With boldness and compassion, Dr. Scott provides practical guidance to healthcare institutions and clinicians to transform the way they provide care to Black families. This book is a huge contribution to field of maternal and child health and should be a required text to support the training of clinicians in anti-Black racism and racial equity nationally."" --Brittany Chambers Butcher, University of California, Davis

About the Author

Karen Antoinette Scott, MD, MPH, FACOG is an improvement and implementation scientist activist, community OBGYN, and applied epidemiologist currently serving as the Chief Black Feminist Physician Scientist, CEO, and Owner of Birthing Cultural Rigor, LLC.