The Rise of Black Feminist Intellectual Thought and Political Activism in Perinatal Quality Improvement: A Righteous Rage about Racism, Resistance, Resilience, and Rigor

Abstract

In this description of her work in perinatal quality improvement, obstetrician and crunk public health scholar Dr. Karen A. Scott describes the ways in which perinatal quality improvement has typically prioritized the deaths or near deaths of Black women at the exclusion of the lived experiences of Black women and people as patient, community, and content experts. Drawn into the work to apply a Black women-centered and liberatory analytic, Dr. Scott turned to Black feminist anthropology to transform perinatal quality improvement ethics and theories of change. The work of Leith Mullings, particularly her excursus on the Sojourner Syndrome, was at the center of Dr. Scott's approach to abating Black perinatal death and redesigning perinatal quality improvement.