It is an honor to have Joy Spencer join us for this podcast episode. She is fresh off the stage from a Testimony before Congress and inspiring us at every turn. Joy is the Executive Director at Equity Before Birth. A non-profit dedicated to saving the lives of Black birthing people and their infants. They strive to improve health outcomes through access to critical services and support.

Joy is a fierce advocate for marginalized people. She relies on her background, lived experience, and parental guidance. You can find her in community meetings and on the floor of congress advocating for others. In today’s episode, we are looking at the state of maternal/infant healthcare and childcare as an essential service to Americans. Joy is helping us understand the disparities experienced by black birthing people. The data also points to dangerous and fatal outcomes for babies before they even arrive! The trends continue into early childhood. This is a life-and-death situation for many citizens. Our work and understanding are critical as part of building better infrastructure.

• Leveraging lived experience to inform better policy and recommendations to achieve better outcomes in advocacy work.
• How the pandemic shed a light on the disparities for marginalized communities in maternal and infant healthcare - especially for black birthing peoples.
• The current state and ranking of maternal and infant health and childcare in the United States.
• Review the statistics and data that show inequality and its dangerous outcomes in the everyday lives of birthing people, mothers, infants, and children.
• How do maternal, infant, and child healthcare and childcare impact our communities and workplaces?
  • The importance of stable and robust national childcare infrastructure.
• The various methods and tools you can use to advocate for yourself (and marginalized birthing persons in general) when you know you are an at-risk population.
• Ways you, as an ally and advocate, can better support and show up for black mothers and birthing peoples in your community and workplaces.

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