The 2nd Annual Missouri Black Maternal Health Summit

April 16-17th, 2025 at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri

"Birthing Boldly: Reimagining Care, Community, and Culture for Black Mamas & Families"

Missouri Black Maternal Health Summit Returns for Two Transformative Days, Featuring a Black Maternal Health Collective Rest & Daydreaming Experience Led by The Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersey

The Missouri Community Doula Council and Jamaa Birth Village are honored to announce the 2nd Annual Missouri Black Maternal Health Summit & Black Maternal Health Collective Rest & Daydream Experience, April 16-17, 2025, at Lincoln University a HBCU and the Missouri State Capitol.

This two-day summit will convene parents, maternal health practitioners, birth workers, policymakers, and advocates to forward Black maternal health justice, policy transformation, and sustainable community care. The summit includes dynamic keynote speakers, interactive workshops, and advocacy actions dedicated to tackling birth outcomes, elevating Black maternal health workers, and reclaiming rest as an act of revolutionary liberation.

"This is not just another conference-this is a movement!"

registration now open!

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WHO:

The 2nd Annual Missouri Black Maternal Health Summit features:

Keynote-NYT Bestselling Author Tricia Hersey, The Nap Bishop – Founder of The Nap Ministry, ushering in a new era of rest as resistance.

Keynote-Midwife & Doula Pioneer Shafia Monroe – Black midwifery trailblazer & birth justice leader

Guest Speaker-Michelle Browder & Mothers of Gyneclogy Monument Exhibit- Creator and home of the Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey Monument

Beyond our three key speakers, the summit will feature a host of transformative speakers, dynamic workshops, and expert-led panels, all dedicated to advancing Black maternal health, birth justice, and community-led solutions.

This is a movement for birth justice, healing, and radical change. Will you be in the room?

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WHAT:

The summit kicks off with a dynamic keynote from Shafia Monroe, followed by a guided tour of the Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey interactive exhibit with Michelle Browder, reclaiming the stories of the Mothers of Gynecology. Attendees will engage in transformative panels and breakout sessions on policy advocacy, mental health, cultural birth traditions, and workforce development for Black doulas and midwives, leading into a high-energy Black Maternal Health Pep Rally at the Missouri State Capitol.

Summit Day one concludes with a Dinner & Black Maternal Health Show Production, celebrating the power and resilience of Black birth workers and families.

Summit Day two shifts into a deeply restorative experience as Tricia Hersey, The Nap Bishop, leads Missouri’s first-ever Black Maternal Health Collective Rest & Daydream Experience-breaking the cycle of overwork and burnout. Each participant will receive a Curated Black Maternal Health Rest Box.

DATE & LOCATION:

The Summit will take place April 16-17, 2025, in Jefferson City, Missouri, a city rich in history and home to the state’s Capitol, where policy decisions that impact maternal health across Missouri are made.

Our main summit site is Lincoln University, a historically Black university (HBCU) founded in 1866 by the 62nd and 65th Colored Infantries. As a beacon of education and Black excellence, Lincoln University serves as the perfect setting to host critical conversations on birth justice, community healing, and reimagining care for Black families.

Lodging: Accommodations are available at the Marriott Courtyard Jefferson City.

Flights: Attendees may fly into St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) or Kansas City International Airport (MCI), or Columbia, Missouri.

A MO-X offers a limited shuttle service from STL and KCMO to the summit site. Visit this link for more details.

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

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REVIEW OUR 2025 FEATURED SPEAKERS & HOSTS

Shafia Monroe

Keynote Speaker

Shafia Monroe, DEM, CDT, MPH, is a renowned veteran midwife, a certified doula trainer, a cultural competency facilitator, a writer, and a motivational speaker. She is president of Shafia Monroe Consulting (SMC) /Birthing CHANGE, a company that helps healthcare professionals and doulas achieve cultural competency, increase patient satisfaction, and improve birth outcomes.

Monroe works with healthcare systems and organizations to grow and retain a multiracial workforce. She is CEO of SMC Full Circle Doula Birth Companion Training, LLC, which has been increasing the number of Black doulas since 2002 and has trained over 3,000 doulas through in person and online training. Monroe spearheaded the first legislative concept, in 2011, Oregon HB 3311, to investigate the use of doulas to improve birth outcomes in vulnerable populations. Her work marked Oregon as the national model for Medicaid reimbursement for doulas and SMC Full Circle Doula Birth Companion, aka (SMC Doulas), as the first Oregon Health Authority (OHA)- approved doula-credentialing organization.“

Tricia Hersey

Keynote Speaker

Tricia Hersey is a multidisciplinary artist, theologian, escape artist and founder of The Nap Ministry. She is the global pioneer and originator of the “rest as resistance” and “rest as reparations” frameworks and collaborates with communities all over the world to create sacred spaces where the liberatory, restorative, and disruptive power of rest can take hold.

Tricia’s work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, Afrofuturism, womanism, and liberation theology. She is a Chicago native who believes in daydreaming, porch sitting, and poetry.

& Special Guest...

Michelle Browder

Guest Speaker, Creator of the The Mothers of Gynecology Monument

Summit Day 1-Monument Exhibit

Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey

The Mothers of Gynecology

Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey were enslaved women from plantations in and around Montgomery, Alabama. With neither consent nor anesthesia, they were experimented upon by Dr. J. Marion Sims in the 1840s. After publishing the results of his “success,” Sims moved to New York to seek fame and fortune. Within a decade, he became known as the Father of Gynecology.

By contrast, Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey fell into history. They changed the world, only to be forgotten by it.

This 15-foot monument honors Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, telling their story and shining a light on ongoing racial disparities in the healthcare industry today. The monument stands as a symbol of all of the enslaved women who were experimented upon in the quixotic pursuit of a modern “science” of gynecology, by Sims and many others.

Those who attend the summit will have an opportunity to view the Mothers of Gynecology Exhibit, meet with Michelle Browder, and engage in the interactive history of the life, legacy and history of Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey.

& Special Guest...

"Sula Spirit" Janet Evans

Guest Speaker, Sacred Birth & Songs

Summit Day-2 Special Guest Speaker

Sacred Birthing Workshop

Ritual, Song & Ceremony

Nana Sula is the founding Priestess of the Temple of Light – Ile’ de Coin-Coin - a Mami Wata Temple of power located in the Musicians Village - New Orleans, LA. Nana Sula was initiated in Ghana, West Africa in 2007 at the Shrine of Impohema and has studied the mysteries of Ghana since 1992. Nana Sula has also been a student of Ifa/Orisha mysteries of Nigeria since 1985. In 2014, Nana Sula authored and produced the Book and CD Project entitled Spirit of the Orisha – a Yoruba language preservation project that is a 38 track CD in the Yoruba language with a matching book of translations (now on audible.com/spirit of the orisha).

She is a Medicine Queen with the Black Masking Indian Tribe Mandingo Warriors – Spirit of Fi-Yi-Yi and a member of the Queens of the Nation Society. Sula is a bead artist, She has been a Birth and Death Doula since 2006 and is Founding Director of the Na’Zyia Doula Collective (2007-2012) – the first Doula Collective of Color in the State of Louisiana.

Sula Janet Evans holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree with distinguished honors in African Studies and English Literature from Rutgers University in New Jersey (1994). She has traveled extensively throughout Africa and the Caribbean and has been a volunteer with Operation Crossroads Africa participating in community development projects on the continent of Africa since 1991. She is a singer, songwriter, performer, painter, bead artist and teacher of sacred African chants. Her first solo CD was written arranged and produced by her and recorded in Tanzania, East Africa in 2016 entitled "A Journey Within" (available on all digital platforms worldwide).

Sula also serves proudly as the Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Congo Square Preservation Society and has been a Board Member since 2009.

This workshop will teach:

Spiritual birthing practices that bring in the Divine Mothers
Birth Ceremony
Birth Altar building for your Ancestors
Chants to the Mothers
Pressure point pain management techniques that help to transform birthing experience