Sackred Birth: Mobilizing a New Quality Paradigm in Obstetric Care

In SACKRED Birth Karen Antoinette Scott situates the contemporary provision and evaluation of obstetric care in a broader historical context to illuminate a culture of neutral apathy and detached concern towards the lives of Black women and men, dating back to antebellum era practices of anti-Black racism and anti-Black misogyny. Using community-based focus groups and consensus dialogue, Scott challenges conventional obstetric quality theories and measures and establishes new quality norms and methodologies to facilitate understanding, investigating, and interpreting clinical practice, decision-making, and care delivery during childbirth hospitalization that affirms the innate worth and power, not pathology, of Black reproducing bodies, Black births, and Black lives.

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.