Continuous labor support is an evidence‐based practice demonstrated to improve birth outcomes, particularly when provided by a trained doula or birth companion. Access to doula services designed to meet the needs of historically underserved and diverse communities can mitigate the negative effects of structural racism and health disparities in perinatal care. Unfortunately, continuous labor support by a companion of choice is not universally supported. This leaves individuals with limited resources unable to access services from a trained doula. Volunteer birth companion programs are one model for increasing access to continuous labor support by bringing the community into the hospital. This article describes a birth justice‐focused volunteer birth companion program that evolved out of a multistakeholder collaboration between community birth workers, local reproductive justice organizations, and hospital‐based providers, staff, and administrators in direct response to community needs. This program is unique in its collaborative development, grounding in core values, and design of a reproductive justice‐focused curriculum that includes training in diversity, inclusion, and care for clients with a history of trauma or perinatal substance use. Key takeaways include recommendations to center client needs, consider sustainability, and embrace flexibility and change. Discussion includes recognition of the strengths and limitations of a volunteer‐based model, including acknowledgment that volunteer birth work, while filling an important gap, necessitates the privilege of having sufficient time, economic freedom, and social support. Ensuring universal insurance coverage for doula services has the potential to increase access to continuous labor support, improve birth outcomes, and diversify the birth workforce.
This paper considers aspects of the variety of literature concerned with information and instruction that was in circulation in later medieval and early modern England. It looks at the dynamic nature of that literature and at what it can reveal about cultural and social practices as well as ways of reading and engaging with texts and textual genres. It also examines the interface between texts in manuscript and in print, and considers some of the implications that technological innovation had for the spread of information.
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