Aspiring Community Birth Workers Look No Further Than City College With Latest Course Offering

Demonstrating how a newborn passes through the birth canal, Asatu Hall, also known as Mama Tutu, used a doll and model of a pelvis in front of a room full of diverse, attentive women.

Hall, a certified nurse-midwife and doula instructor, explained why fetal position matters during labor; whether a baby is headfirst, feet first, or butt first, before a short video showed the tissue layers of the abdomen involved in a Cesarean section.

City College, along with SisterWeb, a network of San Francisco community birth workers, launched a new doula training course this semester, giving students a low-cost or free pathway into a growing field of maternal health work that supporters say can help address racial inequities in birth outcomes.

SisterWeb was created to address the “dire pregnancy and birth-related healthcare inequities experienced by Black women and birthing people.”

The three-unit course is fully accredited and transferable to UC and CSU campuses. Students can currently earn a certificate through the Community Health Worker Department, and supporters hope the training will eventually connect to other health-related programs at City College, including Nursing and Women’s and Gender Studies.

First of its kind

In December 2024, Brianna Smith, a student leader, called together a group of departments and resource centers to try to bring an existing local Black-centered doula curriculum to City College. It garnered support from Interim Chancellor Mitchell Bailey and the Curriculum Committee.

The course arrives as doula care becomes a more visible part of California’s health care system. Medi-Cal has reimbursed for doula services, turning what was once largely community-based support work into an increasingly important form of workforce training since 2023.

The course is based on the Blossoming Birth Doula Curriculum, developed by SisterWeb.

“We very much focus on the culture of doula work, and how it's very indigenous to a lot of cultures, specifically to African cultures and black American Southern cultures,” said Nyomi Zinga, a workforce and outreach director for sister web.

The program will teach participants to navigate the medical system and how to interact with medical professionals, Zinga said. Participants will be taught to use healing herbs and natural remedies.

“Although we're not medical professionals, we still have enough knowledge to be able to advocate for our clients,” Zinga said.

“It’s these sacred skills of being empathetic and supporting one another, sharing the literal work of childbirth,” said Maggie Harrison, Women's and Gender Studies Department Chair. “But it’s also our students are learning a broader set of social and emotional skills that I think are going to be vital for this really uncertain future that we are facing as a nation – as a world.”

“Over the past 10 years, Black/African American mothers had about 4 out of 100 births, but experienced 5 out of 10 maternal deaths, and 15 out of 100 infant deaths,” according to the San Francisco Health Improvement Project. 

“Doula work helps because it improves the conditions of the person who is having a child,” said Smith. “Most important is how a child comes into the world, how the mother is treated when she is carrying life, how the family is held when new life comes into the world.”

“It reduces the risk of trauma that women face when they go into the medical system, specifically women of color, having somebody there to be your cheerleader … to be there to remind you of your power and your voice.” 

Twenty years ago, Smith met Mama Tutu (Hall) while serving on the board of the first national Black doula organization. Later, she reconnected with birth workers through becoming a mother herself and began working with SisterWeb.

Today, Smith is the president of the City College Black Student Union, a peer educator with Project Survive and a student worker with the Women’s Resource Center. 

She previously helped facilitate private doula trainings, led by Hall and hosted at the college.

Turning the training into an accredited course required collaboration between SisterWeb and the college. Beth Freedman, chair of the college’s Community Health Worker program, did a lot of the legwork.

“[Hall] has a background in public health, she's a midwife, and she's the doula instructor,” said Freedman, “We’re so excited to be able to hire her.” 

Recruitment for the course is handled by the resource centers, the BSU, and SisterWeb. 

Freedman said the new doula training course at City College will help expand access to maternal care for minorities across the Bay Area.

“There's just going to be a lot more doulas available, well-trained doulas,” she said. “And that's really going to have a tremendous impact on African American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Native American communities.”